Quotes About Renewal

My barn having burned to the ground, I can now see the moon.

For trees, stories never end, they simply fold one into another. Where one begins to close, another begins to open, so that none are ever finished, not really.

We are the only species on the planet without full employment. Brilliant. We have an economy that tells us that it is cheaper to destroy Earth in real time than to renew, restore, and sustain it. You can print money to bail out a bank, but you can't print life to bail out a planet. At present we are stealing the future, selling it in the present, and calling it "gross domestic product.

I breathe in Your love, Lord, and I breathe out all negativity and unbelief.

Every year, in the third week of February, there is a day, or more usually a run of days, when one can say for sure that the light is back. Some juncture has been reached and the light spills into the world from a sun suddenly higher in the sky...

Remember the end of the road is also its beginning.

One day someone is going to hug you so tight that all of your broken pieces will stick back together. —

Isaiah 40:21–31 Have you not known? Have you not heard? The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . those who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint. (vv. 28, 31)

Everything that happened in life-whether for good or bad, joyous or tragic reasons-held the potential to sanctify and bring one closer to the Lord. Even, Abby realized, the personal pain and horror of loss. In life's catastrophic upheavals, in the self-fragmentation, confusion, and spirit-shattering grief, there was always the hope of rebirth to a new and even better life-a life not of this world but of the Spirit.

But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness" (Lam 3:21—23).

Like an exasperating but invaluable friend, the Bible keeps bringing me back to my senses, often in bracing (and comical) ways.

As for laundry, I might characterize it as approaching the moral realm; there are days when it seems a miracle to be able to make dirty things clean.

The image is dead! Long live the sensation.

Suffering is not eliminated by the resurrection but transformed by it.

God does not patch up the old life, or make certain repairs on the old life; He gives a new life, through the new birth.

Don't grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form. —Rumi (Jalal ad-Din)

We need silence to be alone with God, to speak to him, to listen to him, to ponder his words deep in our hearts. We need to be alone with God in silence to be renewed and transformed. Silence gives us a new outlook on life.

I don't know why I'm always surprised when God does these things. He is so lavish in His love; it takes my breath away. It really does. Just when we think something has ended, He always shows us a new beginning.

Rain makes the sun shine brighter.

Somehow the sight of water has always rejuvenated me, especially when it flows rhythmically.

If some essential part of me was already disappearing as my children moved into increasingly wider orbits, well then, I wanted to rech out and claim something else to take its place.

These teeth marks?" he said. "These stitches? They add to the beauty of the saddle, to the value. They announce it was worth saving. I won't replace it until it falls off in two pieces from the horse's back.

You are a might lotus.

From now on we recognize no one according to the flesh" (2 Corinthians 5:16)—you are a brand-new creature! Old things have passed away and all things have become new. Now, beloved of God, live accordingly.