HL McConnell > HL's Quotes

“No, Jesus opens his arms to his needy children and says, “Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28, NASB). The criteria for coming to Jesus is weariness. Come overwhelmed with life. Come with your wandering mind. Come messy.”
― Paul E. Miller, A Praying Life: Connecting with God in a Distracting World

“All Mature Spirituality Is About Letting Go”
― Richard Rohr, Breathing Underwater

“the purpose of confessing our sins is not to render us miserable by simply reminding us what great sinners we are. It is to remind us of what a great Savior we have.”
― Barbara R. Duguid, Prone to Wander: Prayers of Confession and Celebration

“The game is over once we see clearly because evil succeeds only by disguising itself as good, necessary, or helpful.”
― Richard Rohr, Breathing Underwater

“The most common one-liner in the Bible is, "Do not be afraid." Someone counted, and it occurs 365 times.”
― Richard Rohr, Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life

“Sin happens whenever we refuse to keep growing.”
― Richard Rohr, Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life

“I do not think you should get rid of your sin until you have learned what it has to teach you.”
― Richard Rohr, Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life

“many people struggle to learn how to pray because they are focusing on praying, not on God.”
― Paul E. Miller, A Praying Life: Connecting with God in a Distracting World

“We were together. I forget the rest.”
― Walt Whitman

“Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in thee.”
― Augustine of Hippo, Confessions

“Shame corrodes the very part of us that believes we are capable of change.”
― Brene Brown, I Thought It Was Just Me: Women Reclaiming Power and Courage in a Culture of Shame

“For in grief nothing "stays put." One keeps on emerging from a phase, but it always recurs. Round and round. Everything repeats. Am I going in circles, or dare I hope I am on a spiral?

But if a spiral, am I going up or down it?

How often -- will it be for always? -- how often will the vast emptiness astonish me like a complete novelty and make me say, "I never realized my loss till this moment"? The same leg is cut off time after time.”
― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

“The death of a beloved is an amputation.”
― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

“Talk to me about the truth of religion and I'll listen gladly. Talk to me about the duty of religion and I'll listen submissively. But don't come talking to me about the consolations of religion or I shall suspect that you don't understand.”
― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

“I thought I could describe a state; make a map of sorrow. Sorrow, hoever, turns out to be not a state but a process.”
― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

“It doesn't really matter whether you grip the arms of the dentist's chair or let your hands lie in your lap. The drill drills on.”
― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

“Getting over it so soon? But the words are ambiguous. To say the patient is getting over it after an operation for appendicitis is one thing; after he’s had his leg off is quite another. After that operation either the wounded stump heals or the man dies. If it heals, the fierce, continuous pain will stop. Presently he’ll get back his strength and be able to stump about on his wooden leg. He has ‘got over it.’ But he will probably have recurrent pains in the stump all his life, and perhaps pretty bad ones; and he will always be a one-legged man. There will be hardly any moment when he forgets it. Bathing, dressing, sitting down and getting up again, even lying in bed, will all be different. His whole way of life will be changed. All sorts of pleasures and activities that he once took for granted will have to be simply written off. Duties too. At present I am learning to get about on crutches. Perhaps I shall presently be given a wooden leg. But I shall never be a biped again.”
― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

“The time when there is nothing at all in your soul except a cry for help may be just that time when God can't give it: you are like the drowning man who can't be helped because he clutches and grabs. Perhaps your own reiterated cries deafen you to the voice you hoped to hear.”
― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

“When you are happy, so happy you have no sense of needing Him, so happy that you are tempted to feel His claims upon you as an interruption, if you remember yourself and turn to Him with gratitude and praise, you will be — or so it feels— welcomed with open arms. But go to Him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence.”
― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

“Grief is like a long valley, a winding valley where any bend may reveal a totally new landscape.”
― C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed