If there’s bad behaviour, the quickest way of stopping it is to give more love. That always works, you know. People say that we must punish when there is wrongdoing, but if you punish you’re only punishing yourself. And what’s the point of that?
— Mma Potokwane in The Good Husband of Zebra Drive, by Alexander McCall Smith
Merely to override a human will (as His felt presence in any but the faintest and most mitigated degree would certainly do) would be for Him useless. He cannot ravish. He can only woo. For His ignoble idea is to eat the cake and have it; the creatures are to be one with Him, but yet themselves; merely to cancel them, or assimilate them, will not serve. He is prepared to do a little overriding at the beginning. He will set them off with communications of His presence which, though faint, seem great to them, with emotional sweetness, and easy conquest over temptation. But He never allows this state of affairs to last long. Sooner or later He withdraws, if not in fact, at least from their conscious experience, all those supports and incentives. He leaves the creature to stand up on its own legs — to carry out from the will alone duties which have lost all relish. It is during such trough periods, much more than during the peak periods, that it is growing into the sort of creature He wants it to be. Hence the prayers offered in the state of dryness are those which please Him best. . . . He cannot ‘tempt’ to virtue as we do to vice. He wants them to learn to walk and must therefore take away His hand; and if only the will to walk is really there, He is pleased even with their stumbles.
— Screwtape in The Screwtape Letters, by C. S. Lewis, quoted in A Year with C. S. Lewis, p. 136
This is at least some of what it means to “wait on the Lord.” Waiting on God does not mean passive indifference — hanging around and doing nothing. It has more to do with saying no to impulsive, spur-of-the-moment actions or decisions, and by so doing, saying yes to something you know will satisfy much better down the line. Those who have not yet learned how to wait on the Lord may tend to indulge in something immediate that only half satisfies. But Christians who have fostered a degree of self-control — Christians who know God better — don’t mind putting pleasure on hold. They know something better is brewing down the line.
— Joni Eareckson Tada, Pearls of Great Price, May 2 entry
Mma Ramotswe was right: evil repaid with retribution, with punishment, had achieved half its goal; evil repaid with kindness was shown to be what it really was, a small, petty thing, not something frightening at all, but something pitiable, a paltry affair.
— Alexander McCall Smith, The Miracle at Speedy Motors
This God’s love is a redemptive love; a patient, kind love that never gives up (I Corinthians 13). This Father is a shepherd who, as Jesus taught, does not give up seeking his beloved, wayward sheep, but looks for it until he finds it (Luke 15:4). His covenant with creation will not allow him to abandon it to its own darkness, but commits him to redeeming it in its entirety.
The love of God in the New Testament, as in the Old, is perfectly compatible with divine wrath and punishment (Heb 12:7-11). However, such punishment is always a means to an end, and such wrath is never the last word. The last word is always grace.
— Gregory MacDonald, The Evangelical Universalist, p. 103