David Berry > David's Quotes

“The early morning belongs to the Church of the risen Christ. At the break of light it remembers the morning on which death and sin lay prostrate in defeat and new life and salvation were given to mankind”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Christian Community

“Christian community is like the Christian's sanctification. It is a gift of God which we cannot claim. Only God knows the real state of our fellowship, of our sanctification. What may appear weak and trifling to us may be great and glorious to God. Just as the Christian should not be constantly feeling his spiritual pulse, so, too, the Christian community has not been given to us by God for us to be constantly taking its temperature. The more thankfully we daily receive what is given to us, the more surely and steadily will fellowship increase and grow from day to day as God pleases.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Christian Community

“We pray for the big things and forget to give thanks for the ordinary, small (and yet really not small) gifts.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Christian Community

“And to 'scape stormy days, I choose an everlasting night.”
― John Donne, The Complete English Poems

“A prison cell, in which one waits, hopes - and is completely dependent on the fact that the door of freedom has to be opened from the outside, is not a bad picture of Advent”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer, God is in the Manger: Reflections on Advent and Christmas

“While it is good that we seek to know the Holy One, it is probably not so good to presume that we ever complete the task.”
― Dietrich Bonhoeffer, God is in the Manger: Reflections on Advent and Christmas

“A true gardener would never pretend that gardening is all pleasure, or that it always prompts reflection.
But she might claim that in the garden she has tasted Paradise.”
― Vigen Guroian, The Fragrance of God

“Oh”
― Vigen Guroian, The Fragrance of God

“To save myself, I would try to summon up a vision of Mattie, but I could not see her. I could not imagine her. Some nights in the midst of this loneliness I swung among the scattered stars at the end of the thin thread of faith alone.
And then I would wake up and be in awe to see the daylight coming and my old familiar workaday life taking shape again in the dear world. Coherence and clarity returned. I could imagine myself again. I could imagine Mattie Chatham. I could imagine Port William.”
― Wendell Berry, Jayber Crow