Soul Stirrings

"What I sought after [....] was nothing but how to become wholly God's. This made me resolve to give the all for the all; so after having given myself wholly to God, that He might take away my sin, I renounced, for the love of Him, everything that was not He, and I began to live as if there was none but He and I in the world..." --Brother Lawrence

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"In simple justice we owe Him all our thoughts and words and actions.
Let us see to it that we pay our debt." --Brother Lawrence

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"...Love is the only true power, because it is the only thing that does not want power, just as love is the only true wealth because it is the only thing that can afford to give itself away." -- Mike Mason

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“O Heavenly Love, how precious still,
In days of weariness and ill,
In nights of pain and helplessness,
To heal, to comfort and to bless.
 O Love of God, our shield and stay
Through all the perils of the way;
Eternal Love, in Thee we rest,
For ever safe, for ever blest.”
- C. Hubert H. Parry

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"Lord, I do fear
Thou'st made the world too beautiful this year;
My soul is all but out of me..."
~Edna St.Vincent Millay

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"...We raised the Shining Barrier against creeping separateness, which was, in the last analysis, self. We also raised it against a world of indecencies and decaying standards, the decline of courtesy, the whispering mockers of love. We would have our own standards. And, above all, we would be us-centered, not self-centered. Against creeping separateness we would oppose the great principle of sharing. We saw self as the ultimate danger to love, which it is; we didn't see it as the ultimate evil of hell, which it also is. We saw only the danger to our love. Still, we turned away from it, turned away because we loved our love. And we were determined that it should endure..."
--Sheldon Vanauken

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"Let all our employment be to know God;
the more one knows Him,
the more one desires to know Him."
--Brother Lawrence

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"You do not have to be perfect, just His." – Lora Alessandra

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"If you hear a voice within you saying,
'You are not a painter,'
then by all means paint and that voice will be silenced."
--Vincent Van Gogh

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"Blessed are those that receive the whispers of the divine voice,
and listen not to the whisperings of the world.
Blessed are those ears which hearken not unto the voice which soundeth outwardly,
but unto the Truth which teacheth inwardly..."
--Thomas A' Kempis

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“Amazement was my bliss…” – Thomas Traherne

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"Lord, thou didst empty Thyself for me. I empty myself for Thee." --Amy Carmichael

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"Obedience precedes deeper understanding." – Pastor Marty Giese

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"To be like Christ. To displace self from the inner throne, and to enthrone Him; to make not the slightest compromise with the smallest sin. We aim at nothing less than to walk with God all day long, to abide every hour in Christ and He and His Words in us, to love God with all the heart and our neighbors as ourselves... It is possible to cast every care on Him daily, and to be at peace amidst pressure, to see the will of God in everything, to put away all bitterness and clamor and evil speaking, daily and hourly. It is possible by unreserved resort to divine power under divine conditions to become strongest through and through at our weakest point." – Bishop Handley Moule

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"We profess to be strangers and pilgrims, seeking after a country of our own, yet we settle down in the most un-stranger-like fashion, exactly as if we were quite at home, and meant to stay as long as we could." --Amy Carmichael

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"... Hidden in the hollow of His blessed hand,
Never foe can follow, never traitor stand;
Not a surge of worry, not a shade of care,
Not a blast of hurry, touch the spirit there...
They who trust Him wholly find Him wholly true."
--Francis R. Havergal (1874)

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“If I could tell you, you were made with a great purpose in mind
Who's fingerprints you bear, in your faintest forgetful moments
when you employ your art, or stand in broken beauty- unaware:
that you were and are, fearfully and wonderfully made.”--Lora Alessandra

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"I consider myself as the most wretched of men, full of sores and corruption, and who has committed all sorts of crimes against his King. Touched with a sensible regret, I confess to Him all my wickedness, I ask His forgiveness, I abandon myself in His hands that He may do what He pleases with me. The King, full of mercy and goodness, very far from chastising me, embraces me with love, makes me eat at His table, serves me incessantly, in a thousand and a thousand ways, and treats me in all respects as His favorite..." -- Brother Lawrence

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“Think about this with me for a moment. When we pass an orange orchard in Florida, we don’t exclaim, ‘Behold what great things those trees have done!’ They’re doing what they were created for. Your life and mine will be well-lived and greatly influential if we simply ask God to empower us to do that for which we were created.” – B. Moore

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“It is such a comfort to drop the entanglements and perplexities of life into God’s hands and leave them there.” – L. B. Cowman

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“It is in the shelter of each other that the people live.” – Irish Proverb

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"He fell to the seat, she by his side. There were no more words. The stars were beginning to shine. How was it that their lips met? How is it that the birds sing, that the snow melts, that the rose opens, that may blooms, that the dawn whitens behind the black trees on the shivering summit of the hills?
One kiss and that was all.
Both trembled, and they looked at each other in the darkness with brilliant eyes."
-- Victor Hugo

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"For I do so love being happy, and I want to become very good at it. Because, quite frankly, life is too short and too sad not to pay attention to the glories of the risen Christ flitting around you for your own joy, and the joy of the entire world, and the very atoms of the universe, and not be glad as hard as you can in response." – Lora Alessandra



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“I suspect that the source of every bit of sorrow in my life can be traced to simple unbelief. If I truly believe the past is totally forgiven, the present is supplied with power, and the future is bright with hope, how could I be anything but completely happy?” – James Smetham

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“Nothing lies beyond the reach of prayer except those things outside the will of God.” – L.B. Cowman

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 “Homesickness is a gift, a reflection of having been loved and cared for dearly, and of great love in return.” – Carolyn Weber

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“You are so young, so before all beginning, and I want to beg you, as much as I can, to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves—like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. The point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.” – Rainer Maria Rilke, “Letters to a Young Poet”

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“You’re going to need all the fire you can get… if you’re going to be a committed Christian in our world at all.” – Carolyn Weber

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“That book you labor to write and push to publish, someone will end up resting a coffee cup on, without any care as to your sacrifice. Your children are only young once. Your marriage provides you a chance to put someone else first daily. Such things refine your soul.” – Carolyn Weber

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“Living your faith is risky, but it’s worth it.” – Carolyn Weber

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“Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us.” – Rilke

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“We all struggle, regardless of what we believe, but it’s what we believe that determines the outcome of the struggle.” – Carolyn Weber

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“True oppression comes from everywhere else but God.” – Carolyn Weber

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“Ultimately, self-deception is the great absurdity.” – Carolyn Weber

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“The mind is its own place, and can make
A heav’n of hell, or a hell of heav’n.”
-- John Milton

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“A happy ending makes up for a lot.” – Carolyn Weber

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“Prayers offered in the state of dryness are those which please Him best.” – C.S. Lewis

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“Poverty is a form of want, occurring when your means do not meet your needs. I had grown up with poverty simply being in relation to one’s financial status. But now I was beginning to see that there are all types of poverty, most having nothing to do with money.” – Carolyn Weber

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“Love cannot fill the thickened lung with breath
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
Yet many a man is making friends with death
Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.”
-- Edna St. Vincent Millay

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“But really, so unfair. Just as Christians automatically cannot be folks who give serious thought to what they are doing. As though millions of people for hundreds of years across hundreds of cultures have simply had it wrong. Chesterton was right when he claimed that ‘the Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.’” – Carolyn Weber

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"That is the bizarre thing about the good news: who knows how you will really hear it one day, but once you have heard it, I mean really heard it, you can never unhear it. Once you have read it, or spoken it, or thought it, even if it irritates you, even if you hate hearing it or cannot find it feasible, or try to dismiss it, you cannot unhear it, or unspeak it, or unthink it." -- Carolyn Weber

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“What if everything horrible that happens, from drive-by shootings to illness, is because we have broken this chain of love, and we don’t know how to put everything right again?” – Carolyn Weber

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“Regardless of what poured out, she poured beauty back in.” – Carolyn Weber

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“Take me to You, imprison me, for I,
Except You enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except You ravish me.”
-- John Donne

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''i am a little church (far from the frantic

world with its rapture and anguish) at peace with nature
-i do not worry if longer nights grow longest;
i am not sorry when silence becomes singing
winter by spring, i lift my diminutive spire to
merciful Him Whose only now is forever;
standing erect in the deathless truth of His presence
(welcoming humbly His light and proudly His darkness)''
--e.e. cummings

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“Christianity, if false, is of no importance and if true, of infinite importance. The only thing it cannot be is moderately important.” – C.S. Lewis

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“Being tender and open is beautiful. As a woman, I feel continually shhh’ed. Too sensitive. Too mushy. Too wishy washy. Blah blah. Don’t let someone steal your tenderness. Don’t allow the coldness and fear of others to tarnish your perfectly vulnerable beating heart. Nothing is more powerful than allowing yourself to truly be affected by things. Whether it’s a song, a stranger, a mountain, a rain drop, a tea kettle, an article, a sentence, a footstep…feel it all – look around you. All of this is for you. Take it and have gratitude. Give it and feel love.” --Zooey Deschanel

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“A word or a smile is often enough to put fresh life in a despondent soul.” ― St. Thérèse de Lisieux

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“A single vivid experience of love will advance us much farther, will far more surely protect our souls from evil, than the most arduous struggle against sin.” – Russian Orthodox priest Yelchaninov

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“Growth demands a temporary surrender of security.” – Gail Sheehy

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“Luxury is not a necessity to me, but beautiful and good things are.” – Anais Nin

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“Live as if Christ died yesterday, rose this morning, and is coming back tomorrow.” – Martin Luther

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“It’s not what you believe that counts, it’s what you believe enough to do.” – Gary Gulbranson

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“A holy life will produce the deepest impression. Lighthouses blow no horns;  they only shine.” – D.L. Moody

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“The way home is humility. Make no excuses. Rationalize nothing. Blame no one. Humble yourself.” – Beth Moore

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“How full can a heart be? How much of the precious presence of another can it take in without breaking apart and spilling over onto everything?” – Leigh McLeroy

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“Knowing we are loved makes us brave.” – Leigh McLeroy

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“…Had Mary been filled with reason, there’d have been no room for the child.” – Madeleine L’Engle

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“If there were any place better for you than the one in which you find yourself, Divine Love would have placed you there.” – Charles Spurgeon

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“In God’s eyes, nothing is more significant than servanthood.” – Gary Thomas

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“Love cannot remain by itself–it has no meaning. Love has to be put into action, and that action is service.” --Mother Teresa

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“I have for the first time found what I can truly love – I have found you. You are my sympathy – my better self—my good angel—I am bound to you with a strong attachment. I think you good, gifted, lovely: a fervent, a solemn passion is conceived in my heart; it leans to you, draws you to my center and spring of life, wraps my existence about you—and, kindling in pure, powerful flame, fuses you and me in one.” – Charlotte Bronte, “Jane Eyre”

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"God is infinite and incomprehensible, and all that is comprehensible about Him is His infinity and incomprehensibility."  --John of Damascus

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"She is led by [L]ove. The world moves for [L]ove, it kneels before it in awe..."-
- M. Night Shyamalan

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“We won’t solve all mysteries and our hearts will certainly break in such a vulnerable life… but it is the best way. We were made to be lovers bold in broken places, pouring ourselves out again and again until we’re called home.”-- Jamie Tworkowski (TWLOHA)

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“Clearly my job here is not to go to the town plaza and convince people to change their

religious beliefs or to win a theological debate…
My job is to live wrapped in God, trembling with His thoughts, burning
with His passion.”

--Frank Laubach