Quotes from Margaret Feinberg

Once they respond to my beckoning I have them forever," she said as Swan rested her tiny head in the palm of Lynne's hand.

We rarely choose what is subtracted from our lives, but we can choose how we respond. How we reorganize our lives in order to move forward.

But the spiritual growth we experience in trying times, though often more gradual and painful than we'd like, is occasion for celebration. It's not in the absence of difficulties but in their presence that God bestows a mighty blessing on us.

Mourning is a river that carries us to joy. Sometimes we need to give space for grief in order to make room for joy.

Even microscopic offering cement our commitment to follow God in anything. This grace-given resolve to celebrate Christ in all things is fortified in the storms, not on the still seas.

I define joy as a spectrum of emotions, actions, and responses that includes gladness, cheer, happiness, merriment, delighting, dancing, shouting, exulting, rejoicing, laughing, playing, brightening, blessing and being blessed, taking pleasure in and being well pleased.

Fighting back with joy rarely makes sense.

Joy is irrational and takes hard work and does not always deliver a happily ever after.

Our efforts to fight back with joy are riddled with the temptation to turn our backs, throw up our hands, and abandon the battle. That's precisely when we need to praise, when our decision to rejoice matters most. Even microscopic offerings cement our commitment to follow God in anything. This grace-given resolve to celebrate Christ in all things is fortified in the storms, not on the still seas.

Life without the gift of rest is merely existing without being able to enjoy the bouquet of all we have been given. Just as the fruit of Kristof's vines eventually suffered without respite so did the fruit of my own life.

God is constantly on the move. I cannot stay where I am and follow God at the same time; responding requires movement.

Joy emanates out of the abiding sense of God's fierce love for us.

Worry is a subtle way of telling God that He's fallen asleep at the wheel and that things aren't under His authority, but ours.

God is constantly on the move. I cannot stay where I am and follow God at the same time; responding requires movement.

I call them sacred echoes because I noticed that throughout my relationships, daily life, and study, the same scripturally sound idea or phrase or word will keep reappearing until I can no longer avoid its presence." -The Sacred Echo

And like an echo, God often uses the repetitive events and themes in daily life to get my attention and draw me closer to himself." - The Sacred Echo

God's wisdom, true wisdom, is essential to living the life we were designed to live. Apart from God and his wisdom, we can spend a lot of time and energy getting lost, or worse, asking for directions from people who only pretend to know the way.

Wide awake to the presence of God, I realized I had been so focused on asking why a good God allowed bad things to happen that I was missing out on the nearness of God all along. In becoming preoccupied with the why, I was missing the who.

people today know a lot more about how to become a Christian than about how to be one.

As we come to the end of ourselves, we open the door to discovering the One who created us anew. The One who can whisper to us who we really are as we pilgrim toward our truest and deepest selves.

Joy asks "What if God?" and declares "But if not!

Joy means holding on to hope in God regardless of the outcome. Declaring we will give up everything and entrust ourselves more fully and wholly to the One who holds all things together.

One of the greatest promises to a child of God is that this life is not the end of the story.

Create your own permission slip for joy. Write three words: Accept. Adapt. Depend. Carry this permission slip with you. Tell your friends you're working on becoming more content, more joyful. Take a nap. Live with a messy house for a time. Order takeout. File an extension on your taxes. Stare out the window. Linger in the company of a friend. Breathe in the fullness of life. Use those words to fight back with joy.