D. Marie Prokop

“I said to my soul, be still and wait without hope, for hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love, for love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith, but the faith and the love are all in the waiting. Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought: So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.”
― T.S. Eliot

“The Word we study has to be the Word we pray. My personal experience of the relentless tenderness of God came not from exegetes, theologians, and spiritual writers, but from sitting still in the presence of the living Word and beseeching Him to help me understand with my head and heart His written Word. Sheer scholarship alone cannot reveal to us the gospel of grace. We must never allow the authority of books, institutions, or leaders to replace the authority of *knowing* Jesus Christ personally and directly. When the religious views of others interpose between us and the primary experience of Jesus as the Christ, we become unconvicted and unpersuasive travel agents handing out brochures to places we have never visited.”
― Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel

“In friendship...we think we have chosen our peers. In reality a few years' difference in the dates of our births, a few more miles between certain houses, the choice of one university instead of another...the accident of a topic being raised or not raised at a first meeting--any of these chances might have kept us apart. But, for a Christian, there are, strictly speaking no chances. A secret master of ceremonies has been at work. Christ, who said to the disciples, "Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you," can truly say to every group of Christian friends, "Ye have not chosen one another but I have chosen you for one another." The friendship is not a reward for our discriminating and good taste in finding one another out. It is the instrument by which God reveals to each of us the beauties of others.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

“And God did not just ask for the perfect sheep; He also wanted its wool. Deuteronomy 18:4 instructs shepherds to give the first shearing of the sheep as on offering to God. Above the crackling warmth radiating from the stove, I read the verse aloud to Lynne. "Is a first shearing a once-in-a-lifetime offering?" I asked. "Yes, everybody wants the first shearing, especially if it's from one of your best lambs. The first shearing is the finest fleese that's used to the best clothes...to ask for that is a real sacrifice." ... For the first time in a long while, maybe ever, I had felt with my own hands what God desired from sacrifice. It was nothing like what I expected...In asking for the first fleece, God isn't asking for the biggest. He wants to smallest and the softest. He doesn't want more-He wants the best." -Scouting the Divine”
― Margaret Feinberg, Scouting the Divine: My Search for God in Wine, Wool, and Wild Honey