Joel

“There is nothing more essential for the people of God than to hear their God repeating to them amid all their changing circumstances, ‘I will be with you’ or ‘I will not forsake you.’”

Dale Ralph Davis

“Salvation is not a matter of getting a reward that will make up for a rotten deal; it is a matter of entering by faith into the happiness … that has been pounding on our door all along. … [God] has not taken the disasters out of life, he has become our Life in the midst of disasters. But if we believe that! If we live through the irremovable disasters trusting that every last, bitter twist of fate is nothing but Jesus, Jesus, Jesus — well, that is rather more happiness than anyone could possibly have bargained for here. It is being in a snug harbor all through a stormy voyage. It is being home free all the while we were lost.”

  Robert Capon

“Wrong will be right, when Aslan comes in sight.
At the sound of his roar, sorrows will be no more.
When he bares his teeth, winter meets its death.
And when he shakes his mane, we shall have spring again.”

C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

“We like to tell ourselves a story: ‘This is not who we are.’ But every single week Christians make a confession: ‘This is who we are. Forgive us.’”

James K.A. Smith

“Meek. Humble. Gentle. Jesus is not trigger-happy. Not harsh, reactionary, easily exasperated. He is the most understanding person in the universe. The posture most natural to him is not a pointed finger but open arms.”

Dane Ortlund

“To be grateful for an unanswered prayer, to give thanks in a state of interior desolation, to trust in the love of God in the face of the marvels, cruel circumstances, obscenities, and commonplaces of life is to whisper a doxology in darkness.”

Brennan Manning

“That God is love, that he has set his love upon us, that he loves us still, and that his love will never let us go, is the foundation not only of all reality, but of Christian confidence and Christian stability too. Our stability is not only impossible, but actually inconceivable, apart from the steadfastness of the love of God.”

John Stott

“It might sound strange to consider grief a way to compassion. But it is. Grief asks me to allow the sins of the world—my own included—to pierce my heart and make me shed tears, many tears, for them. … I am beginning to see that much of praying is grieving. This grief is so deep not just because the human sin is so great, but also—and more so—because the divine love is so boundless.”

Henri Nouwen

“Sometimes I’m up, sometimes I’m down
Oh, yes, Lord
Sometimes I’m almost level to the ground
Oh, yes, Lord
Oh, nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen
Nobody knows but Jesus
Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen
Glory, hallelujah!”

Traditional African-American Spiritual