Quotes About Transformation

We have to go into the despair and go beyond it, by working and doing for somebody else, by using it for something else.

Words can sometimes, in moments of grace, attain the quality of deeds.

The main theme remains constant: man owes it to himself to reject despair; better to rely on miracles than opt for resignation. By changing himself, man can change the world.

The revolver was black and nearly new. I was afraid to even touch it, for in it lay all the whole difference between what I was and what I was going to be.

The night had passed completely. The morning star shone in the sky. I too had become a different person. The student of Talmud, the child I was, had been consumed by the flames. All that was left was a shape that resembled me. My soul had been invaded—and devoured—by a black flame.

How Elizabeth Barrett Browning Saved My Life by Mameve Medwed

Selling the Lite of Heaven by Suzanne Strempek Shea

I will unravel here.

Concrete can rot. It turns green and black before crumbling away. Maybe only people from Congo know that.

We jumped into water so clear and warm that it was like jumping from air to air. The sand rose up under us and we floated to where it met the sea and walked out of the water like creatures in an act of evolution.

Travel is life-changing. That's the promise made by a thousand websites and magazines, by philosophers and writers down the ages. Mark Twain said it was fatal to prejudice, and Thomas Jefferson said it made you wise. Anais Nin observed that we travel, some of us forever, to seek other states, other lives, other souls. It's all true. Self-transformation is what I sought and what I found.

It takes a while for revelry to turn to reverence, and much repetition of truth to eventual turn young zeal into habitual channels for good.

Our vision is so limited we can hardly imagine a love that does not show itself in protection from suffering. The love of God did not protect His own Son. He will not necessarily protect us - not from anything it takes to make us like His Son. A lot of hammering and chiseling and purifying by fire will have to go into the process.

But little deaths have to be died just as great ones do. Every reminder that aroused a longing had to be offered up.

And I've come to see that it's through the deepest suffering that God has taught me the deepest lessons. And if we'll trust Him for it, we can come through to the unshakable assurance that He's in charge. He has a loving purpose. And He can transform something terrible into something wonderful. Suffering is never for nothing.

Eve's daughters are as flowers and none can ever say they are through unfolding. And what man can predict the consummate end of such a life when its ultimate center is Sharon's Rose?

It is a merciful Father who strips us when we need to be stripped, as the tree needs to be stripped of its blossoms. He is not finished with us yet, whatever the loss we suffer, for as we loose our hold on visible things, the invisible become more precious—where our treasure is, there will our hearts be.

All the Scriptural metaphors about the death of the seed that falls into the ground, about losing one's life, about becoming the least in the kingdom, about the world's passing away—all these go on to something unspeakably better and more glorious. Loss and death are only the preludes to gain and life. It was a temptation to foreshorten the promises, to look for some prompt fulfillment of the loss-gain principle….

It is nothing short of a transformed vision of reality that is able to see Christ as more real than the storm, love more real than hatred, meakness more real than pride, long-suffering more real than annoyance, holiness more real than sin. - Discipline

Each time God gives us a hard lesson He desires also to give us Himself. If we open our hands to receive the lesson we open our hearts to receive Him, and with Himself His vision to see the glory in the surrender, whether of small things like self-esteem and reputation, or bigger things like a career and a home.

He has promised that our suffering will one day turn into glory if we'll respond to it in faith and obedience.

Many deaths must go into us reaching that measure, many letting go's.

Holiness presupposes constant growth through an ongoing relationship with the One who has called us to be holy.

But I can say that I know the One who knows. And I've come to see that it's through the deepest suffering that God has taught me the deepest lessons. And if we'll trust Him for it, we can come through to the unshakable assurance that He's in charge. He has a loving purpose. And He can transform something terrible into something wonderful. Suffering is never for nothing.