The Lifegiving Home Quotes

“If the precious, limited hours of my day are used bit by bit in scanning information, I will have less and less time for the attentive, slow, good work of creativity, conversation, and connection that real people and real homes require.”
― Sally Clarkson, The Lifegiving Home: Creating a Place of Belonging and Becoming

“Every day in each inch of space, each rhythm of time, each practice of love, we have the chance to join God in coming home, in living so that we make a home of this broken and beautiful world all over again. Love is enfleshed in the meals we make, the rooms we fill, the spaces in which we live and breathe and have our being.”
― Sally Clarkson, The Lifegiving Home: Creating a Place of Belonging and Becoming

“All people need a place where their roots can grow deep and they always feel like they belong and have a loving refuge. And all people need a place that gives wings to their dreams, nurturing possibilities of who they might become.”
― Sally Clarkson, The Lifegiving Home: Creating a Place of Belonging and Becoming

“Home is to be a safe place, a refuge for all who enter, a protection from the harm and storms of the world. Yet often or even daily we open our doors -- usually via television or the internet -- to ideas and images that can damage our faith, abuse our hearts and minds, sear our psyches, and tear apart our peace. Home should be a place where, behind its doors, one should expect to find protection and safety from all the harms of life, including voices that do not speak truth or wisdom. Only the foolish would invite just anyone to enter the door of their home.”
― Sally Clarkson, The Lifegiving Home: Creating a Place of Belonging and Becoming

“When someone once asked me just what it was that my parents did that made me believe in God, without even thinking I said, “I think it was French toast on Saturday mornings and coffee and Celtic music and discussions and candlelight in the evenings . . .” Because in those moments I tasted and saw the goodness of God in a way I couldn’t ignore.”
― Sally Clarkson, The Lifegiving Home: Creating a Place of Belonging and Becoming

“But my parents understood that the world that they made within the walls of our house was what constituted home. So I grew up in spaces framed by art and color, filled with candlelight, marked by beauty. I grew up within a rhythm of time made sacred by family devotions in the morning and long conversations in the evening. I grew up with the sense of our daily life as a feast and delight; a soup-and-bread dinner by the fire, Celtic music lilting in the shadows, and the laughter of my siblings gave me a sense of the blessedness of love, of God's life made tangible in the food and touch and air of our home.
It was a fight for my parents, I know. Every day was a battle to bring order to mess, peace to stressful situations, beauty to the chaos wrought by four young children. But that's the reality of incarnation as it invades a fallen world....What my parents-bless them-knew...is that to make a home right in the midst of the fallen world is to craft out a space of human flesh and existence in which eternity rises up in time, in which the kingdom comes, in which we may taste and see the goodness of God.”
― Sally Clarkson, The Lifegiving Home: Creating a Place of Belonging and Becoming

“Keeping house—picking up those messes one more time—is a service of worship to God as we craft a place of beauty and comfort for all who enter our sanctuary of His very presence.”
― Sally Clarkson, The Lifegiving Home: Creating a Place of Belonging and Becoming

“How we need more “homemakers” so that all who live in this transient, contemporary world might have a place to belong, to feel loved and valued, to serve and be served, to give and receive and celebrate all that is good. So”
― Sally Clarkson, The Lifegiving Home: Creating a Place of Belonging and Becoming

“Home is the place in which we picture, day after ordinary day, the fact that love will endure, that grief will be healed, that joy, one day, will last forever and the celebration will never end.”
― Sally Clarkson, The Lifegiving Home: Creating a Place of Belonging and Becoming

“Influenced by the thought patterns of machines, my own mind cranks along, unable to rest, habituated to the disembodied, unresting online atmosphere. But the constant stream of information isn’t helping me to think more deeply, to contemplate, to have the long-considered knowledge that becomes wisdom. Rather, it is conditioning me simply to glean information and then move on. As author Nicholas Carr wrote, “The Internet is an interruption system. It seizes our attention only to scramble it.”[3]”
― Sally Clarkson, The Lifegiving Home: Creating a Place of Belonging and Becoming

“I began to picture my children’s hearts as treasure chests of a different sort, and I vowed to fill them with intrinsic treasures: the best stories, memorized Scripture, priceless images of classical art, excellent books, memories from great feasts enjoyed together and special days celebrated, great Bible stories and wisdom passages, plus heart photographs of love given, holidays cherished, lessons learned.”
― Sally Clarkson, The Lifegiving Home: Creating a Place of Belonging and Becoming

“Gratitude isn’t a gutting out of thanks, nor is generosity a painful sacrifice. Rather, both come from an overflow of joy. And neither is formed in a vacuum; both must come from recognizing that God’s goodness to us is so extravagant that it must be passed on.”
― Sally Clarkson, The Lifegiving Home: Creating a Place of Belonging and Becoming

“He who is faithful in a very little thing is faithful also in much” (Luke 16:10). It’s easy to think of heroism in terms of the spectacular—a moment of total sacrifice, an act of unmitigated bravery in the face of danger. But those are the shooting star moments of courage, the ones that flare across the sky and draw our eyes to the heavens. Behind them, around them, enduring after their briefer blaze are the long-burning, humbler flames of faithful living. Heroism doesn’t begin in the moment of crisis, and sometimes it never gets noticed at all, because its roots are in the smallest choices of the everyday. But these are the choices on which all good homes are founded.”
― Sally Clarkson, The Lifegiving Home: Creating a Place of Belonging and Becoming

“God is active and present in every moment of our lives, but too often we are so caught up in how we ought to be rather than allowing ourselves to be swept up into the whirlwind of the Spirit. God desires that we learn to play again, to experience Him like little children do, open in wonder to the vastness and endless wonder of Him.”
― Sally Clarkson, The Lifegiving Home: Creating a Place of Belonging and Becoming

“No room is just space. No hour is meaningless. No meal is mere sustenance. Every rhythm and atom of existence are spaces in which the Kingdom can come, in which the story of God’s love can be told anew, in which the stuff of life can be turned marvelously into love. We cannot change the world if we cannot incarnate God’s love in our own most ordinary spaces and hours. Homemaking must be understood as a potent Kingdom endeavor, not merely a domestic task. Homemaking requires a willed creativity, a conscious diligence, because we are called to create new life and challenged to do it in the midst of a world that actively resists us in this endeavor.”
― Sally Clarkson, The Lifegiving Home: Creating a Place of Belonging and Becoming

“In a culture that often views a child in terms of the expense in time and money he will cost in his lifetime, how important it is to intentionally recognize the infinite value of a tiny human being, created with the very imprint and image of God on his life, and to understand that this little one’s life will have consequences for eternity.”
― Sally Clarkson, The Lifegiving Home: Creating a Place of Belonging and Becoming

“Home is your garden of life, so to speak, and you are free to order it and plant it as you will. But all great works of life must be planned in order to make them productive, useful, and flourishing.”
― Sally Clarkson, The Lifegiving Home: Creating a Place of Belonging and Becoming

“how to create a home that nourishes, nurtures, and sustains life and beauty. It is all about how to order your living space and what happens there to embody the joy and beauty of God’s own Spirit.”
― Sally Clarkson, The Lifegiving Home: Creating a Place of Belonging and Becoming

“Beauty is about picturing God’s unchanging goodness and daring to bring it into my own small, dusty days.”
― Sally Clarkson, The Lifegiving Home: Creating a Place of Belonging and Becoming

“What my parents—bless them—knew, what Elizabeth Goudge understood, is that to make a home right in the midst of the fallen world is to craft out a space of human flesh and existence in which eternity rises up in time, in which the Kingdom comes, in which we may taste and see the goodness of God.”
― Sally Clarkson, The Lifegiving Home: Creating a Place of Belonging and Becoming

“Major life changes—anything from moving across country to graduating from college New relationships—either in personal or professional work Challenges and difficulties—from sickness to strife to struggle Goals attained and milestones achieved—losing weight, learning a new skill, gaining financial freedom Travel—a visit to a new city or state or country or a journey that brought new insight Spiritual experiences—encounters with grace, growth experiences, new awareness and understanding Special serendipitous blessings—divine encounters that especially encouraged us”
― Sally Clarkson, The Lifegiving Home: Creating a Place of Belonging and Becoming

“Beauty is more than just pictures on a wall. It is also about colors that bring pleasure, smooth and nubby textures that reward the touch, the wafting fragrance of food in the oven that keeps us sniffing appreciatively, the comfort or excitement of music on the stereo. Beauty is found in the way we light the rooms (we keep a well-stocked shelf of candles and lighters in constant use), the books we open again and again, the way we arrange the furniture and set the table. It is found in natural objects we use for decorating potted plants, shells, autumn leaves, always fresh flowers or pine boughs brought in from our yard and open windows that draw the eye toward the beautiful outdoors.”
― Sally Clarkson, The Lifegiving Home: Creating a Place of Belonging and Becoming

“Give foundations of strength and inspiration to these precious ones, but give them wings as well. Prepare them to take risks, to live by faith, so that they can take the messages and cherished values they learned at home and share them with a hurting world.”
― Sally Clarkson, The Lifegiving Home: Creating a Place of Belonging and Becoming

“we’d had to walk alongside construction tape that kept us out”
― Sally Clarkson, The Lifegiving Home: Creating a Place of Belonging and Becoming

“heroism. Her heart is transformed by suffering into one whose quiet and unspectacular faithfulness sustains the”
― Sally Clarkson, The Lifegiving Home: Creating a Place of Belonging and Becoming

“During these years, God seemed to whisper to me in my quiet times, Give foundations of strength and inspiration to these precious ones, but give them wings as well. Prepare them to take risks, to live by faith, so that they can take the messages and cherished values they learned at home and share them with a hurting world.”
― Sally Clarkson, The Lifegiving Home: Creating a Place of Belonging and Becoming

“Interestingly enough, we found, the habit of regularly expressing our gratitude and our concerns to God actually made us more grateful and more determined to act generously on behalf of others. I think that’s because regular prayer helps cultivate awareness, and awareness is key to both gratitude and generosity. We must learn how to nourish a heart that is keenly aware both of God’s abundance as it comes to us and the needs of the world around us.”
― Sally Clarkson, The Lifegiving Home: Creating a Place of Belonging and Becoming

“But to us the heart of tithing isn’t in making sure to pay an exact amount, but rather in being prepared to give freely and generously of our money, our time, and our talents to support God’s work in the world.”
― Sally Clarkson, The Lifegiving Home: Creating a Place of Belonging and Becoming

“In the end, I believe, heroism is simply faithfulness, a moment-by-moment choice to do what is right—to love once more, to give without fear in the face of every challenge. Heroism is forged and known in such choices, whether in a blazing moment of courage or in the countless small moments of luminous, ordinary life.”
― Sally Clarkson, The Lifegiving Home: Creating a Place of Belonging and Becoming

“Your one life is a great tale, one facet of God’s continuing narrative within the world.”
― Sally Clarkson, The Lifegiving Home: Creating a Place of Belonging and Becoming