Quotes about Renewal

is most vital that the Lord breaks us.

As we bring our will and thought to God His own will and thought begin to be reproduced in us, and then this becomes our will and thought. This kind of prayer is most valuable and full of weight. Let

Unless the believer offers his soul life to death, he shall cultivate that life, incur the displeasure of God, and miss the fruit of the Holy Spirit.

the care of the earth is our most ancient and most worthy and, after all, our most pleasing responsibility. To cherish what remains of it, and to foster its renewal, is our only legitimate hope.

And I knew that the Spirit that had gone forth to shape the world and make it live was still alive in it. I just had no doubt. I could see that I lived in the created world, and it was still being created. I would be part of it forever. There was no escape. The Spirit that made it was in it, shaping it and reshaping it, sometimes lying at rest, sometimes standing up and shaking itself, like a muddy horse, and letting the pieces fly.

Sometimes...I wander about in this house that Nathan and I renewed, that is now aged and worn by our life in it. How many steps, wearing the thresholds? I look at it all again. Sometimes it fills to the brim with sorrow, which signifies the joy that has been here, and the love. It is entirely a gift.

To save myself, I would try to summon up a vision of Mattie, but I could not see her. I could not imagine her. Some nights in the midst of this loneliness I swung among the scattered stars at the end of the thin thread of faith alone. And then I would wake up and be in awe to see the daylight coming and my old familiar workaday life taking shape again in the dear world. Coherence and clarity returned. I could imagine myself again. I could imagine Mattie Chatham. I could imagine Port William.

To be creative is only to have health: to keep oneself fully alive in the Creation, to keep the Creation fully alive in oneself, to see the Creation anew, to welcome one's part in it anew.

When you have gone too far, as I think he did, the only mending is to come home.

Love fills the empty places and flows from what was once the epicenter of the wound. And it's the flowing that washes out the residue of the pain and makes us whole again. That's the crazy miracle that is love. The more you pour out, the more you have to pour.

That we were made to want and give love. That no matter how dark the night, midnight will pass. No darkness, no matter how dark, can hold back the second hand. Whether you like it or not, whether you want it or not, whether you hope it or not, whether you build a wall around your soul and cut out your eyes, wait a few hours and the sun will crack the skyline and the darkness will roll back like a scroll.

Love is an amazing thing. It takes the brokenness, the scars, the pain, the darkness, everything, and makes it all new.