Out to Canaan Quotes

“The rector wondered if the joy that people seemed so expert at containing somehow transferred to their dogs, who had nothing at all to hide.”
― Jan Karon, Out to Canaan

“The standing fields [ready to harvest]were the legions who hadn't filled their God-vacuum with the One who was born to fill it; the standing fields were those who waited for someone to reach out and speak the truth, and tell them how they might be saved.”
― Jan Karon, Out to Canaan

“Paul said in the second epistle...the time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine...they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires, and will turn from the truth and wander away to myths.”
― Jan Karon, Out to Canaan

“With my mother’s death,” Lewis wrote, “all settled happiness, all that was tranquil and reliable, disappeared from my life. There was to be much fun, many pleasures, many stabs of Joy; but no more of the old security.”
― Jan Karon, Out to Canaan

“There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of every person,” Pascal wrote. “And it can never be filled by any created thing. It can only be filled by God, made known through Jesus Christ.”
― Jan Karon, Out to Canaan

“we don’t come to God to attain perfection, we come to be saved.”
― Jan Karon, Out to Canaan

“I said, Thy will be done.” “That’s the prayer that never fails.”
― Jan Karon, Out to Canaan

“thus far,
and grace will lead me home . . . .”
― Jan Karon, Out to Canaan

“Don’t worry about anything . . .” he said aloud, quoting his all-time standby verse in the fourth chapter of Philippians, “but in everything, by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, make your requests known unto God, and the peace that passes all understanding will fill your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.”
― Jan Karon, Out to Canaan

“Bottom line, we’re not created to go it alone, we’re made to hammer out our lives with God as our defender. Going it alone may work for a while, but it never has and never will go the mile.”
― Jan Karon, Out to Canaan

“Suppose for a moment,” Reardon had said, “that God began taking from us the many things for which we have failed to give thanks. Which of our limbs and faculties would be left? Would I still have my hands and my mind? And what about loved ones? If God were to take from me all those persons and things for which I have not given thanks, who or what would be left of me?”
― Jan Karon, Out to Canaan

“For by grace are you saved through faith,” Paul wrote in his letter to the Ephesians, “and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God—not of works, lest any man should boast.”
― Jan Karon, Out to Canaan

“Good works, the Scriptures plainly stated, were no passport to heaven.”
― Jan Karon, Out to Canaan

“He gave her a grunting bear hug and made her laugh, which was a sound he courted from his overworked wife these days.”
― Jan Karon, Out to Canaan

“The menu will include roasted chicken and oyster pie, which I'll do while you squeeze the juice and bake the asparagus puffs.”
― Jan Karon, Out to Canaan

“But guess what, you can also make a palindrome with whole sentences, like 'Poor Dan is in a droop.”
― Jan Karon, Out to Canaan

“Chocolate mocha cake with raspberry filling versus gingersnaps from the bottom shelf . . . .”
― Jan Karon, Out to Canaan

“Hardly anyone cooked for diabetes, thought the rector as they trooped out to eat cake in the shade of the pin oak. Apparently it was a disease so innocuous, so bland, and so boring to anyone other than its unwilling victims that it was blithely dismissed by the cooks of the land.”
― Jan Karon, Out to Canaan

“The two things aren't so different, perhaps. Laughter, tears . . . it's all a way of letting something out, letting something go. Forgiveness . . . somehow, I think that's the answer.”
― Jan Karon, Out to Canaan

“And while he did the run to Farmer, he would do a seemingly childish thing—he would count his blessings as far as he could. Quite possibly the list could go on until Wednesday, for he knew a thing or two about blessings and how they were, even in the worst of times, inexhaustible. It came to him that Patrick Henry Reardon had indirectly spoken of something like this. He had copied it into his sermon notebook only days ago. “Suppose for a moment,” Reardon had said, “that God began taking from us the many things for which we have failed to give thanks. Which of our limbs and faculties would be left? Would I still have my hands and my mind? And what about loved ones? If God were to take from me all those persons and things for which I have not given thanks, who or what would be left of me?” What would be left of me, indeed? he wondered. The very thought struck him with a force he hadn’t recognized when he copied it into his notebook. He put his hand on his dog’s head and hoarsely whispered the beginning of his list: “Barnabas . . .”
― Jan Karon, Out to Canaan

“and”
― Jan Karon, Out to Canaan

“was sea and islands now; the great continent had sunk like Atlantis . . . .”
― Jan Karon, Out to Canaan

“All your circumstances are in the hand of God,” Chambers wrote, “so never think it strange concerning the circumstances you’re in.”
― Jan Karon, Out to Canaan

“As long as you have any floor space at all, you have room for books! Just make two stacks of books the same height, place them three or four feet apart, lay a board across them, and repeat. Violà! Bookshelves!”
― Jan Karon, Out to Canaan

“Paul said in the second epistle to the good chap you were named after, ‘The time is coming when people will not put up with sound doctrine . . . they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires, and will turn from the truth and wander away to myths.”
― Jan Karon, Out to Canaan

“We think we dare not be satisfied with the small measure of spiritual knowledge, experience and love that has been given to us, and that we must constantly be looking forward eagerly for the highest good.’ ”
― Jan Karon, Out to Canaan