JennanneJ

“Only Jesus can hold things like this in tandem. Only Jesus can simultaneously attend to the one with the broken foot and the one with stage IV cancer. Only Jesus can concurrently care about the child withering away from starvation and the child weeping over his parents’ divorce. Only Jesus can cry with the girl sobbing over a high school breakup and the wife who is widowed, left with mouths to feed and an empty bed. He is the only one who can see that all pain is real and valid, regardless of how the world would rank it. He is the only one who can validate our suffering—and he does.”
― Ann Swindell, Still Waiting: Hope for When God Doesn't Give You What You Want

“The word "Eucharist" means literally "act of thanksgiving." To celebrate the Eucharist and to live a Eucharistic life has everything to do with gratitude. Living Eucharistically is living life as a gift, a gift for which one is grateful. But gratitude is not the most obvious response to life, certainly not when we experience life as a series of losses! Still, the great mystery we celebrate in the Eucharist and live in a Eucharistic life is precisely that through mourning our losses we come to know life as a gift.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, With Burning Hearts: A Meditation on the Eucharistic Life

“So often when we say 'I love you' we say it with a huge 'I' and a small 'you'. We use love as a conjunction instead of it being a verb implying action. It's no good just gazing out into open space hoping to see the Lord; instead we have to look closely at our neighbour, someone whom God has willed into existence, someone whom God has died for. Everyone we meet has a aright to exist, because he has value in himself, and we are not used to this. The acceptance of otherness is a danger to us, it threatens us. To recognise the other's right to be himself might mean recognising his right to kill me. But if we set a limit to this right to exist, it's no right at all. Love is difficult. Christ was crucified because he taught a kind of love which is a terror for men, a love which demands total surrender: it spells death.”
― Anthony Bloom, Beginning to Pray

“When we have begged and demanded from God all that we can, and when he still doesn't change our situation, we're left with a choice, we can choose offense with him, or we can choose obedience.

Offense is a terror of a thing: it puts us in the judgment seat over God. We strong-arm God, we yell at him, we tell him all the things he's not. And while it's good to be honest with God, there is a difference between heart-felt honesty and hostile honesty. Heartfelt honesty comes to God on its knees. Hostile honesty comes to God pointing the finger.”
― Ann Swindell, Still Waiting: Hope for When God Doesn't Give You What You Want