JennanneJ

“They’d sat under the starlight and shared quiet conversation and had both read together during the day, happy amidst all of nature’s splendor. On the days the urge to run away grew too strong to bear, she remembered for dear life.”
― Katherine McIntyre, A Reflection of Ice

“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

“This is the real, hard work of faith for most of us--not jumping of cliffs or swimming in shark-infested waters, but being willing to lay our hearts and souls before God without protection or pretense. And it's risky business.

It's risky to continue to open our hearts to the Lord when our dreams and desires don't line up with reality. Don't let anyone tell you differently. Don't let anyone make you feel like coming to the Lord should always feel warm and easy and clear-cut. It won't. It doesn't.

...He isn't bound by our ways, our timelines, our demands. He is bound by truth and love and justice and mercy--by the things he is and contains within himself.”
― 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