“Our eyes are at fault, that is all. God is in the manger, wealth in poverty, light in darkness, succor in abandonment.”

A love that left people alone in their guilt would not have real people as its object. So, in vicarious responsibility for people, and in His love for real human beings, Jesus becomes the one burdened by guilt.

[Christ] is the Mediator, not only between God and man, but between man and man, between man and reality.

We pray for the big things and forget to give thanks for the ordinary, small (and yet really not small) gifts.

Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock.

The will of God, to which the law gives expression, is that men should defeat their enemies by loving them.

But the Christian also knows that he not only cannot and dare not be anxious, but that there is no need for him to be so. Neither anxiety now work can secure his daily bread, for bread is the gift of the Father.

Advent creates people, new people.

This is the end. For me the beginning of life.

The cross is not the terrible end to an otherwise godfearing and happy life, but it meets us at the beginning of our communion with Christ.

I wonder why it is that we find some days so much more oppressive than others, for no apparent reason. Is it growing pains – or spiritual trial? Once they’re over, the world looks quite a different place again.

While it is good that we seek to know the Holy One, it is probably not so good to presume that we ever complete the task.

Only he who believes is obedient, and only he who is obedient believes.

The limitation of the ethical phenomenon to its place and time does not imply its rejection but, on the contrary, its validation. One does not use canons to shoot sparrows.

We are torn out of our own existence and set down in the midst of the holy history of God on earth. There God dealt with us, and there he still deals with us, our needs and our sins, in judgment and grace.

Not hero worship, but intimacy with Christ.

Action springs not from thought, but from a readiness for responsibility.

My breaths give out the stench of dark black pain, that rooted from the poison you gifted me with love.

I seek out the good but keep my senses on alert but then there are moments when all I want to do is drown in the sea.

Darkness attracts me, it’s the only time, I can cry in peace.

The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line, — the relation of the darker to the lighter races of men in Asia and Africa, in America and the islands of the sea.

And Spring arose on the garden fair, Like the Spirit of Love felt everywhere; And each flower and herb on Earth’s dark breast rose from the dreams of its wintry rest.

This idea of perpetual happiness is crazy and overrated, because those dark moments fuel you for the next bright moments; each one helps you appreciate the other.

No durable things are built on violent passion. Nature grows her plants in silence and in darkness, and only when they have become strong do they put their heads above the ground.

Great and glorious God, and Thou Lord Jesus, I pray you shed abroad your light in the darkness of my mind. Be found of me, Lord, so that in all things I may act only in accordance with Thy holy will.