I would not be anywhere else but in this hardest of fields with an invincible Christ... I am full of hope that when God delays in fulfilling our little thoughts, it is to leave Himself room to work out His great ones. And, more and more as times goes on, I feel that the longer He waits the more we can expect, for the deeper and wider will be the undermining, and the greater will be the band of those who will come forth free from their prison walls. When one gets hold of that vision, one can throw back in the devil's face his taunts over the seemingly wasted years that lie behind us.
~Lillias Trotter
(a gem discovered at MargaretAshwood.com)

"What I like about experience is that it is such an honest thing. You may take any number of wrong turnings; but keep your eyes open and you will not be allowed to go very far before the warning signs appear. You may have deceived yourself, but experience is not trying to deceive you. The universe rings true wherever you fairly test it."

~C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy

"What is grace? It is the inspiration from on high: it is love; it is liberty. Grace is the spirit of law. This discovery of the spirit of law belongs to St. Paul; and what he calls 'grace' from a heavenly point of view, we from and earthly point, call 'righteousness.'"
~Victor Hugo, (1802-1885)
French Novelist

"Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point."
~C. S. Lewis

“Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith” (Heb. 12:2).

A blank page. Spells potential. Inspiring. Intimidating. Kind of like the future. Frightening. I’ve felt that way about my future. Sometimes, still do. It’s good to know Someone else is writing the story of my life.

"Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired and success achieved."

~Helen Keller

“When we come to the edge of the light we know, and are about to step off into the darkness of the unknown, of this we can be sure…either God will provide something solid to stand on or…we will be taught to fly.”

~Author unknown

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chilliest land
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

Emily Dickinson

I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year~
"Give me a light that I might tread safely into the unknown."
And he replied,
"Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God. That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way."

~M.L. Haskins (Quoted by His Majesty the King in an empire broadcast.)

God is good, all the time. All the time, God is good. That means even in these periods of confusion and trials of faith. God is good! I don't have direction, but I have Him beside me; that is better than thinking I know where to go on my own.

Not only do I have the hand of God when the world is dark, I have His Word, a lamp for my feet and a light for my path. The five foolish virgins had lamps but no light because their oil ran out. If I have His Word, but not His Spirit, my lamp will not light my way. If I have His Spirit but neglect His Word, there is no context for the oil of His Spirit to flow. Do I have His Word and does His Spirit flow through my life? Then that Word can enlighten my path. "Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path" (Psalm 119:105).

When God Says Wait
"The word spoken to me has been to be ready to go, but also to wait on God’s timing."
by Gabe Reese (90&9.com)

Christmas is approaching and like so many, I'm obsessing over the gift-giving aspect. Would she like this or that, or even that? We all want to please our freinds and our motivation to find that perfect something is the hope of beholding their delight on opening the gifts Christmas morning.

Too, I've been looking closer at God's gifts. "Every good and perfect gift is from above..." I haven't always seen His gifts to me as good and perfect. I've mistrusted and despised the gifts, even tried to shove some back at Him, thinking I wouldn't have time to enjoy them. But He has been a true friend, still aiming to please, hoping to kindle delight in my eyes.

I don't deserve them, but He's given me some good and perfect gifts. May I delight!

When is a Man Educated?

"When he can look out upon the universe, now lucid and lovely, now dark and terrible, with a sense of his own littleness in the great scheme of things, and yet have faith and courage. When he knows how to make friends and keep them, and above all, when he can keep friends with himself.
"When he can be happy alone and high-minded amid the drudgeries of life. When he can look into a wayside puddle and see something besides mud, and into the face of the most forlorn mortal and see something divine.
"When he know how to live, how to love, how to hope, how to pray--is glad to live...and has in his heart a bit of song."

Joseph Fort Newton (a distant relation?)

"I am in the mood for a good story; of course, I am always in the mood for a good story," a sentiment voiced by Winston Churchill and echoed by many others, including one Miss Skinner at her blog, Musings of a Lady.

"Thank God every morning when you get up that you have something to do which must be done, whether you like it or not. Being forced to work, and forced to do your best, will breed in you temperence, self-control, diligence, strength of will, content, and a hundred other virtues which the idle never know."

~Charles Kingsley

I don't understand the mechanics of faith or why the exercise of it is pleasing to God. Is being out on a limb ever comfortable? Yet I rest there, assured that underneath are the everlasting arms. If I fall when following His voice, He will bear me up. Abraham's faith and active obedience to God were counted for righteousness. He believed God. Would I leave my home and family because God promised to show me favor in another land? Would I believe it if He promised my descendants would outnumber the stars even though I were old and childless? God has spoken smaller promises to my heart, and for fear or doubt, I haven't always followed Him. But with His help, I will in this exercize of faith; I will trust Him and I will follow. "But He knoweth the way that I take: when He hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold (Job 23:10).

The God Who Sees
Sometimes we have to jump when we can’t see what we’re jumping into.
By Steve Ares

If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain
If I can ease one life the aching,
Or cool one pain,
Or help one fainting robin
Unto his nest again,
I shall not live in vain.

Emily Dickinson, American Poet (1830-1886)

"I'll quite procrastinating...tomorrow." That seems to be my modus operandi. Today, when I was tempted to put something off, I plunged straight into it. This afternoon, I ran two packages to the post office on my break. I answered several emails within hours of their receipt. I'm posting to my blog after several months of silence. I waste so much energy, never mind time, in putting off till tomorrow what I can very well do today. Today is the day...Carpe diem!

A particularly poignant quote from Lloyd Douglas' The Robe:

Marcellus had been doing an unusual amount of new thinking, these past few days, on the subject of property. According to Justus, Jesus had much to say about a man's responsibility as a possessor of material things. Hoarded things might easily become a menace; a mere fire-and-theft risk; a breeding ground for destructive insects; a source of worry. Men would have plenty of anxieties, but there was no sense in accumulating worries over things! That kind of worry destroyed your character. Even an unused coat, hanging in your closet; it wasn't merely a useless thing that did nobody any good; it was an active agent of destruction in your life. And your life must be saved, at all costs. What would it advantage a man-Jesus had demanded- if he were to gain the whole world- and lose his own life?

"I want the company of the godly men and women in the land; they are the true nobility," (Psalm 16:3, TLB).

There are chapters in my life that I would just as soon skip over, as I do when a novel I'm reading grows tedious. But in life, there is no way to page through the tedious parts. And so we live them, one daypage at a time.

3 1/2 weeks ago, early on the morning of April 24, a new chapter began for us. I was awakened by an unfamiliar crackling sound. When I wandered out of my bedroom, my sleep-swollen eyes were accosted by a wall of fire outside the sewing room window. "Oh God! The Ortiz's house is on fire!" My wail raised the slumbering Amy and Rachel. Rachel: "We have to see if everybody got out. We have to go help them!" Amy: "Jesus, Jesus, Jesus!" I called Mom who was at work, and then 911. We pulled on some clothes and ran out of the house and into the cold night. In the light of fire, I could see the Ortizes huddled on the side of the street, all six of them. "Is everybody okay?" I asked. "Yes." Just minutes after our exit, flames lept the 10 feet between the two houses and our house caught fire. Shuddering, from cold and from the horror, I screamed.

"The puppies!" The dachshunds, Zeidel & Joey were shut in on the south side of the yard, in the area between the two burning houses. When one of our neighbors realized this, he tore off to rescue them. In his haste, he tore down the little lattice gate we'd had constructed to keep them confined to their run because he could not tell how it fastened. The dogs fled into the night. Through the french doors in the back of the house, our neighbor could see our cat Anna, totally fritzed. He took a flower pot and smashed a pane of glass so she could escape the inferno. He returned, brandishing a wounded arm where Anna had scratched him.

In a nightmare, I would have woken up at the point our house caught fire, but when the fire had been contained an hour later and we went home with Bro. Moss, the nightmare was still real. We sat in the Moss' living room as the sun rose and recalled the morning's events over tea.

"It is of the LORD'S mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not," (Lamentations 3:22).

"They say there is a young lady in New Haven who is beloved by that Great Being who made and rules the world, and that there are certain seasons in which this Great Being in some way or other invisibly comes to her and fills her mind with exceeding sweet delight, and that she hardly cares for anything except to meditate on him. That she expects after a while to be received up where he is, to be raised up out of the world and caught up into heaven, being assured that he loves her too well to let her remain at a distance from him always. There she is to dwell with him, and to be ravished with his love and delight forever."

~Jonathan Edwards, a young student at Yale in 1723 on first hearing of Sarah Pierrepont, the young woman who became his bride four years later at age 17