Amy Kannel

“Ours is like any marriage that lasts. We had to give up enough of ourselves to make room for the other person, but we had to retain a sufficient amount of who we were to avoid bitterness. All marriages become a third thing—neither one partner’s dream, nor the other’s, but a different glory, an ordinary one we made together.”
― Esau McCaulley, How Far to the Promised Land: One Black Family's Story of Hope and Survival in the American South

“If we’re all a mix of good and bad, then there’s always a chance good might emerge victorious in the end, if we give God enough time to do His work. Patience with broken people and broken things is a manifestation of trust in God.”
― Esau McCaulley, How Far to the Promised Land: One Black Family's Story of Hope and Survival in the American South

“I started asking a question that, after years and years of practice, has become almost instinct to me in times of disappointment and frustration: What tiny miracle is there buried beneath this disappointment? ...Miracle Hunters are relentless. And they understand the difference between expectations and being expectant. They look for tiny miracles everywhere but they stay open to being surprised by what exactly that miracle will look and feel like. They have cultivated what I call "Positive Paranoia" and believe that hidden within the disappointment, the failure, the unexpected change of plans, there is a nugget of a miracle just waiting to be discovered. ...The minute you start hunting for miracles, the entire way you see the world changes.”
― Liz Forkin Bohannon, Beginner's Pluck: Build Your Life of Purpose and Impact Now

“Translated literally, Jesus replies, "I am, the (one) speaking to you" [John 4:26]. This word-for-word translation comes out awkwardly in English, so it's often broken up in our Bibles. But as New Testament scholar Craig Evans observes, Jesus's statement is "emphatic and unusual" in the original Greek as well. Smoothing it out in translation masks the fact that this is the first of Jesus's "I am" statements. ...This is the first time in John that Jesus explicitly declares he's the Messiah. And as he does so, Jesus makes an even more extraordinary claim. Each of Jesus's "I am" statements gives us fresh insight into who he is. At first, his words to the Samaritan woman seem like an exception. But if we look more closely, Jesus is giving us more insight about his identity when he says to the Samaritan woman, "I am, the (one) speaking to you." Jesus claims he's the Messiah and the one true covenant God. But he is also the one who is speaking to this sexually suspect, foreign woman. He could have just said "I am he!" But as we look at Jesus through this woman's eyes, we see him as the long-promised King and everlasting God, who chooses to converse with her.”
― Rebecca McLaughlin, Jesus through the Eyes of Women: How the First Female Disciples Help Us Know and Love the Lord