Frederica Mathewes-Green

“In communities, at work, but particularly in families, people are put together in something like a three-legged race. God means us to cross the finish line together, and all the other people tied together with us play some part in our progress. They are oftentimes to rouse our stubborn sins to the surface, where we can deal with them and overcome them. Bundled together in families, a giant seven or nine or fifteen legged pack, we seem to make very poor progress indeed and fall to the ground in bickering heaps with some regularity. But God has put us together - has appointed each person in your bundle specifically for you, and you for them. And so, 'little children, let us love one another' with might and main, and keep hopping together toward the finish line.”
― Frederica Mathewes-Green

“Dusty, dark, cold, and hard, coal has no beauty of its own, but when it is consummated by fire it is beautiful and becomes what it was designed to be.”
― Frederica Mathewes-Green, At the Corner of East and Now: A Modern Life in Ancient Christian Orthodoxy