Bernardine W.

“Your desire for more of God than you have right now, your longing for love, your need for deeper levels of spiritual transformation than you have experienced so far is the truest thing about you. You might think that your woundedness or your sinfulness is the truest thing about you or that your giftedness or your personality type or your job title or your identity as husband or wife, mother or father, somehow defines you. But, in reality, it is your desire for God and your capacity to reach for more of God than you have right now that is the deepest essence of who you are.”
― Ruth Haley Barton, Sacred Rhythms: Arranging Our Lives for Spiritual Transformation

“If the churches came to understand that the greatest threat to faith today is not hedonism but distraction, perhaps they might begin to appeal to a frazzled digital generation. Christian leaders seem to think that they need more distraction to counter the distraction. Their services have degenerated into emotional spasms, their spaces drowned with light and noise and locked shut throughout the day, when their darkness and silence might actually draw those whose minds and souls have grown web-weary.”
― Ruth Haley Barton, Invitation to Retreat: The Gift and Necessity of Time Away with God

“Grant me, O Lord, a listening ear to hear you and a hungry soul to long after your Word. Endue me with your heavenly Spirit. Give me the Spirit of wisdom, that I may understand you. Give me the Spirit of truth, that I may know you; your Spirit of compassion that I may fear you; your Spirit of grace that I may love you; your Spirit of zeal that I may hunger and thirst after you; your persevering Spirit that I may live and dwell and reign with you. Elizabeth”
― Trevin K. Wax, Psalms in 30 Days: CSB Edition

“The truth dazzles gradually,” wrote Emily Dickinson, “or else the world would go blind.”
― Robert Benson, In Constant Prayer