Kate McCord > Quotes

“Love: the kind that compels the healthy into the home of the sick; the kind that shops for groceries for a shut-in. The kind that holds a crying child in the middle of the night. Not spectacular. Nothing for the evening news or a Hollywood movie. Just love. Patient, kind, generous love.
Marie smiled. Jesus.”
― Kate McCord, Farewell, Four Waters: One Aid Workers Sudden Escape from Afghanistan

“How much better to remember that we are all on a journey. Each time we see or hear or in some way grasp a teaching or revelation of Christ, we are drawn out of an area of darkness within our lives into His light and truth, into His beautiful kingdom. He invites us to walk with Him, to learn from Him, and to find in Him the healing, love, joy, and peace that our souls desperately need. The good news is that we can walk with Jesus. We can receive His healing long before we understand who He is and why He came in the first place.”
― Kate McCord, In the Land of Blue Burqas

“For my Afghan friends, the notion that it’s God’s will for men and women to live in love and peace is revolutionary. It’s also a dream buried in their deepest being.”
― Kate McCord, In the Land of Blue Burqas

“Why does God call us to dangerous places, to the highways and the hedges of the world? Because God’s house is not yet full. Because there are places that are empty and guests who have not yet received their invitation.”
― Kate McCord, Why God Calls Us to Dangerous Places

“The challenge for all of us, Afghan and American, is to find peace, love, and joy in whatever situation we find ourselves.”
― Kate McCord, In the Land of Blue Burqas

“When two cultures come into contact, they’re both changed, and sometimes those changes are good. When we see or hear an idea or thought that’s good and right, it resonates in our hearts. It’s as though something within us recognizes goodness and truth and embraces it. We taste and see that it’s good. Then we long for more.”
― Kate McCord, In the Land of Blue Burqas

“How we define the source of our problems determines where we look for solutions.”
― Kate McCord, In the Land of Blue Burqas

“So we, God’s servants, go, our Master’s invitation in our hands, out to the highways and hedges. We walk through squalid refugee camps in Syria, fetid open-air trash dumps in Mozambique, drug-infested smoky brothels in Bangkok. We go because deep in the Pamir Mountains of Tajikistan and out on the dusty plains of Iraq, there are people whom God wants to come to His feast. There are people hidden away in small villages in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan who belong at God’s table. There are women in Somalia; street kids in Portland, Oregon; girls in northern Nigeria; and men in Chechnya and a thousand other places who belong in God’s house. God sees them, every one of them, people drawing water from open wells, drinking tea in mud houses, scheming evil in dark camps, hiding from violence in rough caves. He knows their names and faces and voices and laughter and tears. He knows their fears and dreams and joys and sorrows. He was there when they were born, when they fell down, and when they got up—and He wants to share the blessings of all He has with them. This is the heart of God—generous, loving, kind, patient—always ready to bless. He’s prepared His table from the foundations of the earth, and there is still room.”
― Kate McCord, Why God Calls Us to Dangerous Places

“And when they admitted to praying for permission to kill me, well, where does one put that?”
― Kate McCord, In the Land of Blue Burqas

“Margaret leaned toward her. "Marie. Remember this; time does not heal all wounds. Time seals wound. It doesn't heal them."
Marie looked into Maragret's [sic] soft face.
"Marie. Christ heals all wounds. Next week, you will not be fine, but you will be better." Margaret continued. "The most important thing here is to find Christ in this experience.”
― Kate McCord, Farewell, Four Waters: One Aid Workers Sudden Escape from Afghanistan

“Beneath the overlay of cultural rules and religious laws is the God-created human spirit that longs to live as God created it. O”
― Kate McCord, In the Land of Blue Burqas

“In Afghanistan, kidnapping is the third most lucrative economic activity, just behind opium and stealing or embezzling foreign development money. Locals,”
― Kate McCord, In the Land of Blue Burqas

“In the midst of our pain-filled conversation, I recognized that we were sitting in the sacred, the holy. We had brushed against the eternal, transcendent God. Our trauma, sorrow, and grief were interwoven with grace, love, and even, though it’s impossible to explain, joy.”
― Kate McCord, Why God Calls Us to Dangerous Places

“Followers of Jesus understand that conversion is a matter of the heart. Real conversion follows revelation. It cannot be reduced to a declaration followed by indoctrination.”
― Kate McCord, In the Land of Blue Burqas

“And yet we know that forgiveness is a foundation stone in the kingdom of God. It’s absolutely critical. Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. We also know that the kingdom of God is good news—that somehow even this forgiveness, the grace to do it, is good for us. We know the kingdom of God was meant for us and we were meant for the kingdom.”
― Kate McCord, In the Land of Blue Burqas

“There’s something in the human spirit that longs to tell the story, to make sense out of our unique experience. We open that trunk and unpack its scraps of memories. We invite others to look at them and tell us what they see. Somehow, in the unpacking and repacking, we define and contain all those scraps. We shine a little light into the corners of that trunk and feel better about its presence in our heart. The storyteller says, “This is my wound. This is what happened to me, and it’s important. It’s not important because I’m the only one who suffered. No. It’s important because I suffered and I’m important.”
― Kate McCord, In the Land of Blue Burqas

“A young student in America asked me what the hardest thing was about living and working on the field. Immediately, a list of challenges scrolled through my mind, but I think this is the hardest: sometimes we give everything we have only to find that it’s not enough.”
― Kate McCord, Why God Calls Us to Dangerous Places

“There is often a gulf between what we say we believe and what we actually believe. Sometimes the gulf is broad and full of differing ideas and strong emotions. We genuinely do not believe what we say and will not act on it. At other times, in other situations, the gulf is narrow, changing, in motion. We do believe what we say, but we don’t desire to act on it.”
― Kate McCord, In the Land of Blue Burqas

“There is an invitation to humility in walking with Christ in a dangerous place. We are not the saviors. We are flesh-and-blood human beings called to be His presence, to love people He loves, and to share His stories with them. It’s God who births faith in people’s hearts.4”
― Kate McCord, Why God Calls Us to Dangerous Places

“Later that evening the three of us—Lars, Noa, and I—sat together, breathed, and shared our stories. Noa talked about shock, fear, and deep sadness. Lars described his chains and helplessness. I spoke of shock and numbness. If our conversation had stayed there, I think we would have drowned. Instead, I noticed something subtle but deep. We each shared glimpses, soft touches of grace. We reflected on how God had prepared us before the crisis to walk through it. We talked about the different ways He had been with each of us through the long season of Lars’s captivity. We reflected on the gentleness with which He had held us when the kidnapping was over and we each lay wounded, exhausted, and confused in His arms. We spoke these things through tears and trembling words. In doing so, we touched threads of Christ’s presence woven through a dense and traumatic tapestry. It was not a conversation of exultant victory. There was no celebratory glory, but there was certainly glory.”
― Kate McCord, Why God Calls Us to Dangerous Places

“And this is the thing I must remember, always; the world is full of frightened and frightening men and women whom God loves with a love so rich and so deep that no matter what they do, He still wants to bring them home.”
― Kate McCord, Why God Calls Us to Dangerous Places

“Jesus calls us to dangerous places because He loves people who live in dangerous places. He loves the perpetrators of violence and the victims of violence. He loves the children and the old, the men and the women, the rich and the poor.”
― Kate McCord, Why God Calls Us to Dangerous Places