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Her voice sounded full of gravel, as if she had chain-smoked from the age of four.
Despite her best effort, she landed with an unladylike plop. Most of her sits had been plops for some time, so that was no surprise.
She closed her eyes and relaxed into the chair, as if the Lord himself had provided his lap on which she could rest. Without fail, he always found a way to comfort his beloved, despite the broken dreams and the prayers yet unanswered. He always was up to something good, even if she couldn’t see it. In fact, he did his best work in such times. If only she had learned that truth earlier in life.
John and God had had a whole thing going that she never understood, nor did she want to, thank you very much.
she had learned that where there is pain, there is a calling. A duty. And a great and wonderful commission.
The silence that hung in the room had the same heaviness that had once sunk into her own bones in her basement apartment. It was the shape and weight of profound loneliness. Lord, shower your mercy here.
A pained body with a broken spirit tends to recoil when the hand of grace first finds its wounds.
Clara leaned toward her and whispered, “Ours is a God of new life, Miss Kelley.” Of the many things Clara desired to say to the girl, none ranked more important than that. It was the core, the epicenter, the root of everything yet to be spoken.
The grave is not my final home. I want to live as if I believe that. By God’s grace, I will live because I believed that.”
Even in pain, God’s up to something.”
hard things usually end in the biggest blessings.”
“That may not sound extraordinary to some people, Miss Kelley, but we should never underestimate the life-changing gift of friendship.”
“Hard is a good word for it, honey. But God was good to provide a better story. His stories usually are better than anything we can come up with. He gave me lots of friends and love and adventure, right where I was. I was short on family, but I was never low on blessings.”
I want it to be known that I did my utmost to leave in my wake the love Jesus first gave me. I came to trust him later in life than most, when I was thirty-six, after many years of being angry at him for all he had taken away from me. But he is a God of new life, Miss Kelley. A God of rescue and redemption. Always has been, always will be.
“Authentic love is the greatest joy there is, Miss Kelley, but it requires a thousand little deaths to self.”
“Fear is an invitation to remember who God is.”
“My lips will glorify you because your faithful love is better than life.” Psalm 63:3.
“‘I always let the LORD guide me. Because he is at my right hand, I will not be shaken.’”
“I simply tried to love people as best I could for as long as I was privileged to be with them.”
