Loraena > Loraena's Quotes

“...the secret to joy is to keep seeking God where we doubt He is.”
― Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are

“It is in the dark that God is passing by. The bridge and our lives shake not because God has abandoned, but the exact opposite: God is passing by. God is in the tremors. Dark is the holiest ground, the glory passing by. In the blackest, God is closest, at work, forging His perfect and right will. Though it is black and we can't see and our world seems to be free-falling and we feel utterly alone, Christ is most present to us...”
― Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are

“As we wait and pray, God weaves his story and creates a wonder. Instead of drifting between comedy (denial) and tragedy (reality), we have a relationship with the living God, who is intimately involved with the details of our worlds. We are learning to watch for the story to unfold, to wait for the wonder.”
― Paul E. Miller, A Praying Life: Connecting With God In A Distracting World

“I know that life is busy and hard and that there's crushing pressure to just settle down and get a real job and khaki pants and a haircut. But don't. Please don't. Please keep believing that life can be better, brighter, broader because of the art that you make. Please keep demonstrating the courage that it takes to swim upstream in a world that prefers putting away for retirement to putting pen to paper, that chooses practicality over poetry, that values you more for going to the gym than going to the deepest places in your soul. Please keep making your art for people like me, people who need the magic and imagination and honesty of great art to make the day-to-day world a little more bearable.”
― Shauna Niequist

“God is a person, and his universe reflects his personhood. The closer something is to the character of God, the more it reflects him and the less it can be measured. Things such as integrity, beauty, hope, and love are all in the same category as prayer. You can tell their presence and even describe them, but you can't define them, simply because they are too close to God's image.”
― Paul E. Miller, A Praying Life: Connecting With God In A Distracting World

“Often the darkest things within ourselves become the keys by which we open ourselves to God, to His healing, and to a better comprehension of grace (full comprehension, I think, is beyond us at present). Yes,”
― Carolyn Weber, Surprised by Oxford

“We know that to become a Christian we shouldn’t try to fix ourselves up, but when it comes to praying we completely forget that. We’ll sing the old gospel hymn, “Just as I Am,” but when it comes to praying, we don’t come just as we are. We try, like adults, to fix ourselves up. Private, personal prayer is one of the last great bastions of legalism. In order to pray like a child, you might need to unlearn the nonpersonal, nonreal praying that you’ve been taught.”
― Paul Miller, A Praying Life: Connecting With God In A Distracting World

“They say time is money, but that's not true. Time is life. And if I want the fullest life, I need to find fullest time... the busyness of your life leaving little room for the source of your life...

God gives us time. And who has time for God?

Which makes no sense.”
― Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are

“This love of which I speak is slow to lose patience - it looks for a way of being constructive.
Love is not possessive.
Love is not anxious to impress nor does it cherish inflated ideas of its own ideas.
Love has good manners and does not pursue selfish advantage.
Love is not touchy.
Love does not keep account of evil or gloat over the wickedness of other people. On the contrary, it is glad with all good men when truth prevails.
Love knows no limits to its endurance, no end to its trust, no fading of its hope; it can outlast anything. It is, in fact, the one thing that stands when all else has fallen.”
― Elisabeth Elliot, Let Me Be a Woman

“I want to see beauty. In the ugly, in the sink, in the suffering, in the daily, in all the days before I die, the moments before I sleep.”
― Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are

“God never witholds from His child that which His love and wisdom call good. God's refusals are always merciful -- "severe mercies" at times but mercies all the same. God never denies us our hearts desire except to give us something better.”
― Elisabeth Elliot

“It’s not merely that heaven will be wonderful in spite of our anguish; it will be wonderful because of it. Suffering serves us. A faithful response to affliction accrues a weight of glory. A bounteous reward. God has every intention of rewarding your endurance. Why else would he meticulously chronicle every one of your tears? “Record my lament; list my tears on your scroll—are they not on your record?” (Psalm 56:8). Every tear you’ve cried—think of it—will be redeemed. God will give you indescribable glory for your grief. Not”
― Joni Eareckson Tada, When God Weeps: Why Our Sufferings Matter to the Almighty

“There is hope in forgiveness”
― John Piper, A Sweet and Bitter Providence: Sex, Race, and the Sovereignty of God

“The knowledge of our union with Christ...gives us confidence in prayer. It was when Jesus had begun to expound the closeness of this union that he also began to introduce the disciples to the true heart of prayer. If Christ abides in us and we abide in him, as his word dwells in us, and we pray in his name, that God hears us (Jn 15:4-7). But all of these expressions are simply extensions of the one fundamental idea: If I am united to Christ, then all that is his is mine. So long as my heart, will and mind are one with Christ's in his word, I can approach God with the humble confidence that my prayers will be heard and answered.”
― Sinclair B. Ferguson, The Christian Life: A Doctrinal Introduction

“The love of Christ for me will get last say. He is merciful to me for his name’s sake, for the sake of his own goodness, for the sake of his steadfast love and compassion (Psalm 25). When he thinks about me, he remembers what he is like, and that is my exceeding joy. My indestructible hope is that he has turned his face towards me, and he will never turn away.”
― David Powlison

“Ernest once told me that the word paradise was a Persian words that meant walled garden. I knew then that he understood how necessary the promises we made to each other were to our happiness. You couldn't have real freedom unless you knew were the walls were and tended to them. We could lean on the walls because they existed; they existed because we leaned on them.”
― Paula McLain, The Paris Wife

“When I was about eight, I decided that the most wonderful thing, next to a human being, was a book.”
― Margaret Walker

“I have also long held the belief that one's tears are a guide, that when something makes you cry, it means something. If we pay attention to our tears, they'll show us something about ourselves”
― Shauna Niequist, Bread and Wine: A Love Letter to Life Around the Table with Recipes

“I found that each time a test was negative, it stopped the dreaming and hoping for a while. Taking the test was a way of puncturing the balloons of hope, because if I didn't, they would lift and lift without any evidence, and their falling back down every month was too painful. Essentially, I took all these tests to keep myself from hoping, because the hoping was breaking my heart.”
― Shauna Niequist, Bread and Wine: A Love Letter to Life Around the Table with Recipes

“I don't really want more time; I just want enough time. Time to breathe deep and time to see real and time to laugh long, time to give You glory and rest deep and sing joy and just enough time in a day not to feel hounded, pressed, driven, or wild to get it all done-yesterday.”
― Ann Voskamp

“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. What does it feel like to be weary? You have trouble concentrating. The problems of the day are like claws in your brain. You feel pummeled by life. What does heavy-laden feel like? Same thing. You have so many problems you don’t even know where to start. You can’t do life on your own anymore. Jesus wants you to come to him...”
― Paul Miller, A Praying Life: Connecting With God In A Distracting World

“I won't desecrate beauty with cynicism anymore. I won't confuse critical thinking with a critical spirit, and I will practice, painfully, over and over, patience and peace until my gentle answers turn away even my own wrath. I will breathe fresh air while I learn, all over again, grace freely given and wisdom honored; and when my fingers fumble, whenI sound flat or sharp, I will simply try again.”
― Sarah Bessey, Jesus Feminist: An Invitation to Revisit the Bible's View of Women

“What you see and what you hear depends a great deal on where you are standing. It also depends on what sort of person you are.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Magician’s Nephew

“No great wisdom can be reached without sacrifice.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Magician’s Nephew

“Wouldn't he know without being asked?' said Polly.

'I've no doubt he would,' said the Horse (still with his mouth full). 'But I've a sort of an idea he likes to be asked.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Magician’s Nephew

“Caring too much for objects can destroy you. Only—if you care for a thing enough, it takes on a life of its own, doesn’t it? And isn’t the whole point of things—beautiful things—that they connect you to some larger beauty?”
― Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch

“—if a painting really works down in your heart and changes the way you see, and think, and feel, you don’t think, ‘oh, I love this picture because it’s universal.’ ‘I love this painting because it speaks to all mankind.’ That’s not the reason anyone loves a piece of art. It’s a secret whisper from an alleyway. Psst, you. Hey kid. Yes you.”
― Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch

“A person is, among all else, a material thing, easily torn and not easily mended.”
― Ian McEwan, Atonement

“It's frightening when things you love appear suddenly changed from what you have always known.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible

“I got to thinking—when it was too late—you have to reach out to people. To your family, too. You can't just let them sit there, you should put your hand out. If they slap it back, well you reach out again if you care enough. If you don't care enough, you forget about them, if you can.”
― Cynthia Voigt, Dicey's Song