Quotes About Belonging

The children were small and still belonged to them.

This is how all social, ideological, or religious movements police their members—by making clear that agreement will be rewarded with greater social standing and support, and disagreement punished with ostracism. This pressure is so amorphous and pervasive that, like oxygen, you are only aware of it when it is gone.

Every man has two counties--his own and America.

Christ entered our world. As a result, we can enter His.

To live as God's child is to know, at this very instant, that you are loved by your Maker not because you try to please him and succeed, or fail to please him and apologize, but because he wants to be your Father. Nothing more. All your efforts to win his affection are unnecessary. All your fears of losing his affection are needless. You can no more make him want you than you can convince him to abandon you. The adoption is irreversible. You have a place at his table.

You are loved by your maker not because you try to please him and succeed, or fail to please him and apologize, but because he wants to be your father.

If you aren't you, we don't get you.

if you were adopted, your parents chose you. Surprise pregnancies happen. But surprise adoptions? Never heard of one. Your parents could have picked a different gender, color, or ancestry. But they selected you. They wanted you in their family.

Come, live in me!" Jesus invites. "Make my home your home." Odds are that you know what it means to be at home somewhere. To be at home is to feel safe. The residence is a place of refuge and security. To be at home is to be comfortable. You can pad around wearing slippers and a robe. To be at home is to be familiar. When you enter the door, you needn't consult the blueprint to find the kitchen.

Heaven has a place for you. Paul knew this. "For there stood by me this night an angel of the God to whom I belong" (Acts 27:23).

You are in the Lord's service. "For there stood by me this night an angel of the God to whom I belong and whom I serve" (Acts 27:23).

It's good to have you back, David. We missed you while you were away.

To accept God's grace is to accept God's offer to be adopted into his family.

Give my friends and loved ones freedom from their idols as well so they can fully enjoy being part of your family. Help them know that you are their only creator and nothing on this earth has ownership of them.

He knows your name. And he can't wait to get you home.

Of all the things you must earn in life, God's unending affection is not one of them. You have it. Stretch yourself out in the hammock of grace.

In America my mother has eyes as strong as boulders, never once skittering off a face, but she has not learned to place decorations and phonograph needles, nor has she stopped seeing land on the other side of the oceans. Now her eyes include the relatives in China, as they once included my father smiling and smiling in his many western outfits, a different one for each photograph that he sent from America. (1983: 59)

Whatever peace I know rests in the natural world, in feeling myself a part of it, even in a small way.

I too have known the inward disturbance of exile, The great peril of being at home nowhere, The dispersed center, the dividing love; Not here, nor there, leaping across ocean, Turning, returning to each strong allegiance; American, but with this difference - parting.

As a child I was always borrowing other people's families, being invited for a week or a month in the summer to share a family life.

I believe that one can never leave home. I believe that one carries the shadows, the dreams, the fears and the dragons of home under one's skin, at the extreme corners of one's eyes and possibly in the gristle of the earlobe.

You only are free when you realize you belong no place — you belong every place — no place at all.

We may act sophisticated and worldly but I believe we feel safest when we go inside ourselves and find home, a place where we belong and maybe the only place we really do.

I long, as does every human being, to be at home wherever I find myself.