words.

Getting lost in a book is one of my absolute most favorite things to do. Words can carry such hopeful weight and terrifying beauty. I love when people who see the world differently then I do use their words to challenge my thoughts, beliefs and emotions. When their words can tug on my heart strings or stretch my mind. Here are a few people's words who did that for me this summer...


"People are willing to be brave when they admit their smallness within the enormity of the world, and  the best way to understand our smallness is so leave our comfort zones and start exploring, one foot in front of the other."
 -Tsh Oxenreinder

"To avoid unseemly places is to avoid God's grace in its most abundant and often scandalous form."
-Kris Rocke

"It's sloppy theology to think that all suffering is good for us, or that it's a result of sin. All suffering can be used for good, over time, after mourning and healing, by God's graciousness. But sometimes it's just plain loss, not because you needed to grow, not because life or God or anything is teaching you any kind of lesson."
-Shauna Niequist

"God is God. I dethrone Him in my heart if I demand that He act in ways that satisfy my idea of justice."
-Elisabeth Elliot

"My idea of God is not a divine idea. It has to be shattered time after time. He shatters it Himself. He is the great iconoclast. Could we not almost say that this shattering is one of the marks of His presence?"
-C. S. Lewis

"Either Jesus is on the throne ruling all things for you or this is a good as it gets."
-Tim Keller (on suffering and sovereignty)

"Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing, live your way into the answer." 
-Rainer Maria Rilke

"The quickest way for anyone to reach the sun and the light of day is not to run west, chasing after the setting sun - but to head east, plunging into the darkness until one comes to the sunrise." 
-Jerry Sittser