Melissa Petersen

“One of the purposes for which God instituted prayer may have been to bear witness that the course of events is not governed like a state but created like a work of art to which every being makes a conscious contribution, and in which every being is both a means and an end.”
― C.S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer

“We are always completely, and therefore equally, known to God. That is our destiny whether we like it or not. But though this knowledge never varies, the quality of our being known can….Ordinarily, to be known by God is to be, for this purpose, in the category of things. We are, like earthworms, cabbages, and nebulae, objects of Divine knowledge, But when we (a) become aware of this fact--the present fact, not the generalization--and (b) assent with all our will to be known, then we treat ourselves, in relation to God, not as things but as persons. We have unveiled. Not that any veil could have baffled his sight. The change is in us. The passive changes to the active. Instead of merely being known, we show, we tell, we offer ourselves to view.”
― C.S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer

“The disciples, the writers of the Gospels, Paul himself would never be able to conceive of a world or society like America where (mostly White) Christians owned so many businesses, homes, wealth, institutions, and held the highest levels of power in government. We might be considered freaks in a different regard. We might be seen as the most preposterous of all: the people with power constantly stoking the fear that we will loose it, claiming the blessing of a Savior who urged us to do just that.”
― Amy Peterson, Where Goodness Still Grows: Reclaiming Virtue in an Age of Hypocrisy

“He felt a quiet pride about the road he had traveled with this old pack - from Glipwood forest, over Miller's Bridge, past the Stranders, to Dugtown, then back along the Strand, over the Barrier, up through the Stony Mountains, over Mog Balgrik, to the Ice Prairies, then across the Dark Sea of Darkness. His anxiousness about another day at school shrank when he thought about how far the Maker had carried him. He may be scarred and worn in places, but like his pack, he believed he was the better for it.”
― Andrew Peterson