Tess McDonald

“The word suffering is much too grand to apply to most of our troubles, but if we don’t learn to refer the little things to God how shall we learn to refer the big ones? A definition which covers all sorts of trouble, great or small, is this: having what you don’t want, or wanting what you don’t have. The vicissitudes of travel furnish plenty of what Janet Erskine Stuart calls “blessed inconveniences,” occasions which fit both categories in our definition.”
― Elisabeth Elliot, A Path Through Suffering

“Do you know what hurts so very much? It's love. Love is the strongest force in the world, and when it is blocked that means pain. There are two things we can do when this happens. We can kill that love so that it stops hurting. But then of course part of us dies, too. Or we can ask God to open up another route for that love to travel.'
I did not know, as I listened to my father's footsteps winding back down the stairs, that he had given me more than the key to this hard moment. I did not know that he had put in my had the secret that would open far darker rooms that this--places where there was not, on a human level, anything to love at all.”
― Corrie ten Boom, The Hiding Place

“You either believe God knows what He's doing or you believe He doesn't. You either believe He's worth trusting or you say He's not. And then, where are you? You're at the mercy of chaos not cosmos. Chaos is the Greek word for disorder. Cosmos is the word for order. We either live in an ordered universe or we are trying to create our own reality.”
― Elisabeth Elliot, Suffering is Never for Nothing

“There is no qualitative or quantitative measurement for pain. It is simply there--sharp or dull, shooting or stabbing, bearable or excruciating, local or general, it is unexplained, uninvited, unavoidable. It takes command. It is all-encompassing, implacable, exigent.”
― Elisabeth Elliot, Love Has A Price Tag