Amanda Davee

“God isn’t a sadist who delights in using agony to teach us a lesson. But in the alchemy of redemption, God can take what is only sorrow and transform it into the very path by which we learn to love God and let ourselves be loved. This is the strange (and usually unwanted) way of the abundant life–the dying necessary to bring resurrection.”
― Tish Harrison Warren, Prayer in the Night: For Those Who Work or Watch or Weep

“Our telos is community not self-sufficiency. It's feast, a life together.

Even now, we work toward this vision of redemption. We weep and watch, but we don't stop there. We don't take a passive posture toward the renewal of the world.

Our shared human vulnerability calls us to action, to work. Our response to human vulnerability, is always in part to seek to mitigate it. To make the world, however slightly, more safe, more beautiful, more just and truthful.”
― Tish Harrison Warren, Prayer in the Night: For Those Who Work or Watch or Weep

“The problem of pain can't be adequately answered because we don't primarily want an answer.

When all is said and done, we don't want God to simply explain himself. To give an account of how hurricanes and head colds fit into his overall redemptive plan. We want action. We want to see things made right.

At its heart, theodicy is the longing for a God who notices our suffering, who cares enough to act, and who will make all things new. It is an ache that cannot be shaken, which we all share deep in our bones and carry with us every day and every night.”
― Tish Harrison Warren, Prayer in the Night: For Those Who Work or Watch or Weep

“Only while I’m still in bed. That doesn’t mean I don’t get something out of it once I’m there. It’s not even really the religion bit. It just warms you, the familiar faces, feeling a part of something. And the incense too. It smells like home. Safe, you know? And you sit there in the quiet, listening, and you get to thinking about something you’ve been wrestling with. And I don’t know if it’s those big high ceilings that just spirit it away—the blessed space—but when I leave, I always feel lighter. Ready to go into the week.”
― Florence Knapp, The Names