Ben Tarver

“Lament is how we learn to live between the poles of a hard life and God’s goodness. It is an opportunity to remind our hearts about God’s faithfulness in the past, especially when the immediate events of life are overwhelmingly negative. While we’re still in pain, lament reminds our hearts of what we believe to be true.”
― Mark Vroegop, Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy: Discovering the Grace of Lament

“But Jackie Robinson was a man of faith. I do not just mean faith in God, though he was indeed a religious man. He also had extraordinary faith in himself and his destiny. He believed deeply that he was the one meant to cross baseball's color line. He believed deeply that God would not have led him down this path only to fail.
That faith filled him with something more powerful that confidence.
He knew that we would succeed because to do anything less would be unthinkable.”
― Joe Posnanski, The Baseball 100

“Those blessings will become burdens if you let fear control you and convince you that something terrible is about to happen, that the relationship will fail, or you won't succeed at work. Fear does that because it's there to destroy, ruin, take away peace, and disrupt our relationship with God.”
― Sydney McLaughlin, Far Beyond Gold: Running from Fear to Faith

“After all, if the lion doesn’t eat you personally, you won’t have to wait long until the vultures, ants, hyenas, and jackals do. Africa is astoundingly efficient in the disposal of protein.”
― Peter Hathaway Capstick, Death in the Long Grass: A Big Game Hunter's Adventures in the African Bush