Quotes About Spirituality

Well, he says, basically, that people have to suffer to really recognize grace when it comes. I

Because nothing true can be said about God from a posture of defense.

There is no strictly secular language that can translate religious awe.

The idea of grace had been so much on my mind, grace as a sort of ecstatic fire that takes things down to essentials.

I have decided the two options for me are (1) to torment myself or (2) to trust the Lord. There is no earthly solution to the problems that confront me. But I can add to my problems, as I have believe I have done, by dwelling on them.

We are part of a mystery, a splendid mystery within which we must attempt to orient ourselves if we are to have a sense of our own nature.

And now they say my heart is failing. The doctor used the term angina pectoris, which has a theological sound, like misericordia.

Much more prayer is called for, clearly, but first I will take a nap.

God does not need our worship. We worship to enlarge our sense of the holy, so that we can feel and know the presence of the Lord, who is with us always. He said, Love is what it amounts to, a loftier love, and pleasure in a loving presence.

For me writing has always felt like praying, even when I wasn't writing prayers, as I was often enough. You feel that you are with someone. I feel I am with you now, whatever that can mean, considering that you're only a little fellow now and when you're a man you might find these letters of no interest.

How oddly holiness situated itself among the things of the world, how endlessly creation wrenched and strained under the burden of its own significance.

I knew perfectly well at the time, as I had for years and years, that the Lord absolutely transcends any understanding I have of Him, which makes loyalty to Him a different thing from loyalty to whatever customs and doctrines and memories I happen to associate with Him.

Some of them seem to be a kind of wilderness unto themselves. But there must be angels there, too, and springs of water. Even that wilderness, the very habitation of jackals, is the Lord's. I need to bear this in mind.

if you ever wonder what you've done in your life, and everyone does wonder sooner or later, you have been God's grace to me, a miracle, something more than a miracle.

He was going on about baptism. A birth and a death and a marriage, he said. A touch of water and these children are given the whole of life.

doctrine is not the same as belief, it is simply a way talking about it; beliefs are lived

Lord make His face to shine upon thee and be gracious unto thee: The Lord lift up His countenance upon thee, and give thee peace." Nothing could be more

Gilead is a book that deserves to be read slowly, thoughtfully, and repeatedly … I would like to see copies of it dropped onto pews across our country, where it could sit among the Bibles and hymnals and collection envelopes. It would be a good reminder of what it means to lead a noble and moral life—and, for that matter, what it means to write a truly great novel."—Ann Patchett, The Village Voice

My heart was very heavy. There was Boughton sitting in his Morris chair staring at nothing. Glory told me the only words he had said all day were Jesus never had to be old.

For me writing has always felt like praying, even when I wasn't writing prayers as I was often enough. You feel that you are with someone.

I felt just the way I imagine the shade of poor old Samuel must have felt when the witch dragged him up from Sheol. Why hast thou disquieted me, to bring me up? In fact, I had spent the morning darkness praying for the wisdom to do well by John Ames Boughton, and then when he woke me, I was immediately aware that my sullen old reptilian self would have handed him over to the Philistines for the sake of a few more minutes' sleep.

For me writing has always felt like praying even when I wasn't writing prayers, as I was often enough. You felt that you are with someone

Love is holy because it is like grace – the worthiness of its object is never really what matters.

I had a dream once that I was preaching to Jesus Himself, saying any foolish thing I could think of, and He was sitting there in His white, white robe looking patient and sad and amazed.