Maya Angela Story: "Someone says, 'I am a Christian'. Maya says 'already?' . . . In an interview she said: "I'm trying to become a Christian, which is no small matter".
. . . Even you, poor trembler, will stand by and see the salvation of God and will be amazed at two things--your own unbelief and God's faithfulness. You say that the sea is before you, that the mountains are on either side, and the foe is behind you . . . but your God will lead you through the depths of the sea and put a song in your mouth that you never could have known if there had been no sea, no Pharaoh and no mountains to shut you in.
. . . Even you, poor trembler, will stand by and see the salvation of God and will be amazed at two things--your own unbelief and God's faithfulness. You say that the sea is before you, that the mountains are on either side, and the foe is behind you . . . but your God will lead you through the depths of the sea and put a song in your mouth that you never could have known if there had been no sea, no Pharaoh and no mountains to shut you in.
Charles Spurgeon
The title the first and the last is also irrefutable proof that Jesus is YAHWEH, the Lord. These terms together mean that Jesus is the beginning, middle and the end for the Christian. Preach orthodoxy, or any form of doxy--if you have left out Christ, there is no manna from Heaven, no water from the rock, no refuge from the storm, no healing for the sick, no life for the dead. If you leave out Christ, you left the sun out of the day and the moon out of the night, you have left waters out of the sea and the foods out of the river, you have left the harvest out of the year, the soul out of the body, you have left the joy out of heaven, yea you have robbed all of its all. There is no gospel worth think of, much less worth proclaiming in Jehovah's name if Jesus be forgotten.
Charles Spurgeon
John of the Cross says the night of the sense is the crisis that initiates the movement from dependency on sense and reason to docility of the spirit.
St. John of the Cross
When we genuinely believe that inner transformation is God's work and not ours we can put to rest our passion to set others straight.
Richard Foster
Good things on earth--the natural world, beauty, love, joy--still bear traces of their original purpose, but amnesia mars the image of God in us.
From Orthodoxy by G. K. Chesterton
We need to be angels for each other, to give each other strength and consolation. Because only when we fully realize the cup of life is not only a cup of sorrow, but also a cup of joy, will we be able to drink it.
Henri Nouwen
The real Son of God is at your side. He is beginning to turn you into the same kind of thing as Himself. He is beginning, so to speak, to "inject" His kind of life and thought, His 'Zoe' (life) into you; beginning to turn the tin soldier into a live man. The part of you that does not like it is the part that is still tin.
From "Mere Christianity" by C. S. Lewis
