Quotes from Chris Fabry

Ruthie handed me a leather-bound notebook and said she wanted me to fill it with everything I could remember.

It's because I want you to remember that character counts. You can be the best there ever was at something, but if you have no character, what do you have? On the other hand, if you have very little as far as accomplishments but you have character, well, then you're all right in my book.

Please, God, she prayed. Help me to hear him and let him just say what he needs to say. Help me not be afraid.

You struggle. You fight and you claw inside that head of yours. You wrestle with God, with the idea that he actually cares for you, with the place your children have brought you, and a thousand other things. There's something about your struggle others need to know. That they'll benefit from." "I don't understand.

God puts every one of us here for a purpose. There's some pull on our lives that draws us toward that purpose, and the farther we go away from it, the more unhappy we are. The closer we get, the more we yearn and desire it.

Thank you, loving Father, for our Paige. Write your Word on her heart. You say in your Word that you store up success for the upright. Pour out your love on her and through her.

I accept you and love you and always will.

One of the Bible studies her group had gone through contained a whole section on forgiveness and how important it was. It asked, if we truly possess forgiveness from God, can we give that forgiveness to others? And if you're not ready to forgive another person, can you really say you're ready to be forgiven by God?

Nobody knows that but you and God. And you don't even know the half of it. You see, he looks at our lives as a whole, not just today, tomorrow, yesterday, and next week. Not even this year and next. He's not counting your failures and your mistakes and keeping a running tab like heaven's waiter. He sees the end just as well as the beginning. He knows about the pit you're in right now.

Old age teaches you in a very unkind way that things won't necessarily get better. Not in this life. In fact, you can pretty much count on things degenerating. Being content is not a lack of ambition. It's being able to rest and relax and know that your worth doesn't come from what others think of you or even what you think of you.

If you've ever had a friend who cares enough about you to get down in the dirt and roll around, to cry and laugh and shovel the manure of life, you'll know how I felt when Ruthie leaned forward. I still get shivers thinking about her words and how true they were. How true they are.

It's not faith to say that when something painful happens, when you lose and lose again and the hurt goes so deep that you don't think you can take another breath, it's all going to work out for good. Faith doesn't explain. It doesn't even need to know or expect a happy ending. That's not what we're promised. Faith is abandoning illusions. It rests in something bigger, something beyond us and our ability. And I suspect you know that now.