Category: FAITH

  • God does not show us the whole plan of our life at a burst, but unfolds it to us bit by bit. Each day He gives us the opportunity of weaving a curtain, carving a peg, fashioning the metal. We know not what we do. But at the end of our life the disjointed pieces will suddenly come together, and we shall see the symmetry and beauty of the Divine thought. Then we shall be satisfied. In the meantime let us believe that God’s love and wisdom are doing the very best for us.

    The Gift of Suffering
    by F.B. Meyer

  • You felt you were Christ’s companion; that He was using you, and there was a constant interchange of holy fellowship between Him and you. But for some reason which you cannot understand the morning light has died out of your life, and instead of your sitting with Christ upon the throne, in the conscious enjoyment of fellowship with Him, you have been brought down into the very dust of neglect and forsakenness; and for a long time now you have been saying, “My God, my God! Why hast Thou forsaken me?” You cannot imagine why. The probability is, that in your case it is not the result of any sin on your part, or of any neglect of your duties, but because God is desirous of ascertaining whether you love Him for the light of His face or for Himself.

    The Gift of Suffering
    by F.B. Meyer

  • Every means has proved powerless, every path too short. God’s impenetrable night wraps round us. Terrible loneliness accompanies us, but this is necessary and inevitable. Every word of consolation seems like a lie. One believes one has been abandoned by God.

    Letters from the Desert
    by Carlo Carretto

  • But God does not listen to such entreaty; rather, instead of consolation he sends boredom, and instead of light, darkness. Right there, halfway along our road, we don’t know whether we are going backwards or forwards.

    Letters from the Desert
    by Carlo Carretto

  • The more they advance, the more the darkness thickens around them. The more they go on, the more bitter and insipid everything becomes. They derive little comfort from the recollection of times past when God seemed to make their spiritual path easier.

    Letters from the Desert
    by Carlo Carretto

  • “Letting there be room for not knowing is the most important thing of all. When there’s a big disappointment, we don’t know if that’s the end of the story. It may just be the beginning of a great adventure. Life is like that. We don’t know anything. We call something bad; we call it good. But really we just don’t know. ”

    —Pema Chödrön

  • As I stand over the insect crawling amid the pine needles on the forest floor, and endeavoring to conceal itself from my sight, and ask myself why it will cherish those humble thoughts, and bide its head from me who might, perhaps, be its benefactor, and impart to its race some cheering information, I am reminded of the greater Benefactor and Intelligence that stands over me the human insect.

    Walden
    by Henry David Thoreau

  • Let’s be honest. Christian perspectives are also about social ethics; they’re about the same.

    —Archbishop Angaelos

  • Many, at their time of death weep, not for their sins, but because death will deprive them of the pleasures of life. They weep because death will separate them from their beloved ones and from their lusts; the world is still sweet in their eyes even at the hour of death. Do not think that death surely brings dread to man. No, this is not true for every one. The thief on the right benefitted from the hour of death whereas the thief on the left did not. Whilst the thief on the left was blaspheming and reviling, his companion was praying and supplicating, saying “Remember me, O Lord, when You come into Your kingdom.”

    —H.H. Pope Shenouda III, Father, Forgive Them

  • In the case of physical illness, even if doctors tell us it is beyond hope, we do all we can to save the body. But on the other hand, when it comes to the spirit and its maladies, for which recovery is never beyond reach, we plunge into despair as if there is nothing we can do. Focusing on your spirit more than your body will save both; focusing on just the body will cause you to lose both.

    ST. JOHN CHRYSOSTOM
    ON REPENTANCE & DEFEATING DESPAIR
    Letters to Theodore