Quotes from Jan Karon

When I speak of God's will, it helps to know that he wants the best for us. If you can't believe he's there, pray anyway. If you feel he's cheap and withholding, thank him anyway. There will come a time when you'll thank him even for the hard places." "Perhaps somewhere I have the smallest bit of faith," she said, "something left over from my childhood. But it's almost nothing, not enough..." "If you yield it up, God will make it enough.

Though we don't do it often enough, it's easy to have a grateful heart for food and shelter, love and hope, health and peace. But what about the hard stuff, the stuff that darkens your world and wounds you to the quick? Just what is this everything business? "It's the hook. It's the key. Everything is the word on which this whole powerful command stands and has its being.

everybody is trying to swallow something that won't go down

Thank you, God, for second chances

I believe if I were charged with having a goal, it would be to live without fretting—to live more fully in the moment not always huffing about as I've done in recent years . . . to live humbly—and appreciatively—with whatever God furnishes.

I think it means to go unfettered by cares, by the infernal bondage of the mortal. Go with a light heart, trusting God and giving thanks. Go and gather unto yourselves so you can pour out to others.' He took a deep breath. 'Go without looking back.

A small parish is a fragile ecology.

Bonhoeffer said it's not about hero worship, but intimacy with God.

In the end, his mother's memory could not be shamed by a gift from God. Don't worry about me, she would say, and never worry what others may think. I worried too much about what others thought—I can tell you it's a tragic waste of time and energy and pokes God in the eye.

Was his ego so twisted that he had to seize control over outcomes? No, it was almost worse than that. He was driven to console people, to bind them up, to protect them from the worst—an ambition that often got in the way of the Holy Spirit's ministrations. . . . He didn't know if it was so loving to protect people. Perhaps really loving meant not protecting them.

While most people took family for granted, he [Father Tim] took it for grace.

His style was to give the issue to God and haul it back again, ad infinitum, 'til the cows came home, until the thing finally wore itself out in him.

I thought you drove down here in a Buick," said Absalom Greer, "but it looks like you've come drivin' a hard bargain.

Lon Birdie had said, 'Sammy has his daddy's temper, you don't want to cross him.' But Sammy would be crossed in this life again and again, and how would he learn to handle being crossed if the people who cared never crossed him?

There are no words to express the abyss between isolation and having one ally. It may be conceded to the mathematician that four is twice two. But two is not twice one; two is two thousand times one.

As worthless as guilt was known to be, he couldn't help feeling it, seeing his wife work herself to exhaustion for a parish tea that would last only two hours.

God is in love with you, brother. He made you for himself.

He was used to her tears. They were a kind of language that needed expression.

Lord, he prayed, thank You for Your continued grace. Help me fulfill Your plan for my life; give me a heart to hear Your voice. . . . And please, if You would do the same for Dooley . .

What don't you love?" "Three things. Stress, stress, and stress.

He snuggled up to her back, conforming to her soft contours. "Spoons" is what this marital position was called in their part of the South.

extraordinary, but I found it

Thank you, God, for loving me, and for sending Your son to die for my sins. I sincerely repent of my sins, and receive Christ as my personal savior. Now, as Your child, I turn my entire life over to You.

Fishin' promotes patience, Madelaine! Patience! A boy has t' learn he can't always have what he wants, when he wants it. Look at th' state of th' world. Most of th' troubles t'day come from havin' no patience. An' take perseverance, that's a absolute requirement if a boy's gon' make anything of hisself.