Hope empties our hands in order that we may work with them. It shows us that we have something to work for, and teaches us how to work for it.

-Thomas Merton, No Man Is An Island, (Barnes & Noble Books, 2003), 15

The thing that will most transform your prayer life is realizing God is listening to you.

-Jared Wilson, The Gospel-Driven Church

One of the moral diseases we communicate to one another in society comes from huddling together in the pale light of an insufficient answer to a question we are afraid to ask.

-Thomas Merton, No Man Is An Island, (Barnes & Noble Books, 2003), xiii

You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.

-Mark Twain

Forgiveness is the fragrance of the violet which still clings fast to the heel that crushed it.

-Russian Proverb

“In kindness” – be perfectly clear and emphatic with regard to your preaching of God’s truth, but amazingly kind in your treatment of people.  Some of us have a hard, metallic way of dealing with people which never has the stamp of the Holy Ghost on it.

-Oswald Chambers, Approved Unto God, (The Complete Works of Oswald Chambers (Grand Rapids: Discovery House, 2000), 41

A finale is not always the best
song but it is always the last.

-Calvin Miller, The Singer, (Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 1977), 101

Nothing blinds the mind to the claims of Jesus Christ more effectually than a good, clean-living, upright life based on self-realization.

-Oswald Chambers, Approved Unto God, (The Complete Works of Oswald Chambers (Grand Rapids: Discovery House, 2000), 31

A sick society must think much about politics, as a sick man must think much about his digestion.

-C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory, (HarperSanFrancisco, 2001), 162

And those who know the Ancient Star-
Song watch with singing for the
sign of footprints in the galaxies
through which the little planet
rides in routine cycles of despair
But Joy seldom sleeps for long.
And someday in a lonely moment man-
kind will shake an unfamiliar hand
and find it wounded.

-Calvin Miller, The Singer, (Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 1977), 151