March 4, 2020 - Thoughts and Quotes

“ The gateway that leads out into life is small. We can’t get through it with the baggage of pride. Only the humble enter. They do so by the willingness to stoop, to accept weaknesses and sorrows and deaths. The gateway opens to new powers, new joys, new Life, where they find a “grand new independence of any earthly thing to satisfy, the liberty of those who have nothing to lose because they have nothing to keep” (Trotter: Parables of the Cross)

” If we suffer, He suffers. We are His body here on earth. This poor human flesh, yours and mine, is where Jesus now lives, so pain bestows on us the incomprehensible privilege of helping to carry to completion the quota He must endure. As we accept this burden with thankfulness, we enter into an ever-deepening fellowship of His sufferings—but let us never forget that it was His own perfect and complete sacrifice of Himself that opened to us this possibility. Because of that we become His dwelling place. Ought not this to make us glad? Isn’t this reason enough to make our sufferings a sacrifice of praise?” - Elizabeth Elliot

” But if you follow a stripped and crucified Saviour, and by the power of His resurrection seek to enter into the fellowship of His sufferings, you will go on in peace and be one of those blessed ones who spread peace all around.” - Amy Carmichael

“ It is a depthless hour of sweetest sleep as the man’s brow unwrinkles, as if a hand had smoothed it, the way a hand does a crushed ball of paper, opens it, smooths it, and smooths it, so the poet might begin again his poem.” - Li-Young Lee.