a journey log: faith

Wednesday, December 10, 2014

faith

So I am praying while not knowing how to pray. I am resting while feeling restless, at peace while tempted, safe while still anxious, surrounded by a cloud of light while still in darkness, in love while still doubting.

--Henri Nouwen, The Road to Daybreak

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Words to live by...

This is the most profound spiritual truth I know: that even when we're most sure that love can't conquer all, it seems to anyway. It goes down into the rat hole with us, in the guise of our friends, and there it swells and comforts. It gives us second winds, third winds, hundredth winds. (Anne Lamott, Traveling Mercies)

...every conscious person, every person who is awake to the functioning principles within his reality, has a moment where he stops blaming the problems in the world on group think, on humanity and authority, and starts to face himself...This is the hardest principle within Christian spirituality for me to deal with. The problem is not out there; the problem is the needy beast of a thing that lives in my chest. (Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz)

For the Spirit of God lies all about the spirit of man like a mighty sea, ready to rush in at the smallest chink in the walls that shut him out from his own--walls which even the tone of a violin or the smell of a rose is sometimes enough to rend. (George MacDonald, The Musician's Quest)

Silence requires the discipline to recognize the urge to get up and go again as a temptation to look elsewhere for what is close at hand. It offers the freedom to stroll in your own inner yard, and to rake up the leaves there and clear the paths so you can easily find the way to your heart. Perhaps there will be much fear and uncertainty when you first come upon this "unfamiliar terrain," but slowly and surely you will discover an order and familiarity which deepens your longing to stay home. (Henri Nouwen, With Open Hands)

You learn to speak by speaking, to study by studying, to run by running, to work by working; and just so, you learn to love God and man by loving. Begin as a mere apprentice and the very power of love will lead you on to become a master of the art. (Francis de Sales)

The day will come when Jesus will give the rewards, and He makes no mistakes, although some people may wonder how you come to merit such a reward, since they had never heard of you before. (Anonymous)

You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do. (Anne Lamott, Traveling Mercies)

If I am content with little, enough is as good as a feast. (Isaac Bickerstaffe)