Jan Smith

“remember to P.R.A.Y.! More than anything else, this simple acronym is the thing that will help you grow in prayer. ‘Pause’. Remember that crazed greyhound pursued by the bistro chair? Try to ‘be still and know’ God (Ps. 46:10). ‘Rejoice … always’ (Phil. 4:4). Remember my son Daniel’s scribbled prayers? Your Father in heaven loves you, knows you, and interprets your heart perfectly. Give him thanks! ‘Ask and it will be given to you’ (Matt. 7:7). Remember George Müller praying for daily bread? Ask the Father for everything from peace in the Middle East to parking spaces. ‘Yield’. Offer every part of yourself to him as an instrument of righteousness’ (Rom. 6:13). Remember those Thai boys trapped in the cave? Wait and trust for the light and hope to come.”
― Pete Greig, How to Pray: A Simple Guide for Normal People

“No paradise without a snake.”
― Connie Palmen, Your Story, My Story

“There are times when everything seems easy, and times when it all seems impossibly hard. To make that manageable, we only have to remember that our present will one day become a past, and our future will be our present. We know that, because it’s happened before. The things we put behind us will often come around again. The things that trouble us now will one day be past history. Each time we endure the cycle, we ratchet up a notch. We learn from the last time around, and we do a few things better this time; we develop tricks of the mind to see us through. This is how progress is made. But one thing is certain: we will simply have different things to worry about. We will have to clench our teeth and carry on surviving again. In the meantime, we can only deal with what’s in front of us at this moment in time. We take the next necessary action, and the next. At some point along the line, that next action will feel joyful again.”
― Katherine May, Wintering: How I learned to flourish when life became frozen

“He sat down and picked up a pen. He looked at the photograph of him and his brother just after they’d joined up, and words that had so long evaded his mouth now gathered at the nib of his pen, and he wrote down everything he felt and everything he could see. He wrote to Peace once a week between their courting, and what he couldn’t get down on paper that first week he continued into the second week, then the third. He wrote sitting on a harbour bench, he wrote at the tiller of his boat. Peace got to know her fisherman through his letters. And when they met up she made him read them out loud, so that the words that had gathered at the nib of his pen found their rightful place upon his tongue. 47”
― Sarah Winman, A Year of Marvellous Ways