Giving thanks is that: making the canyon of pain into a megaphone to proclaim the ultimate goodness of God when Satan and all the world would sneer at us to recant.

Life is so urgent and necessitates living slow. It's only the amateurs-and that I've been, and it's been ugly-who thinks slow and urgent are contradictory.

It's habits that can imprison you and it's habits that can free you. But when thanks to God becomes a habit - so joy in God becomes your life.

The only way to care for the disadvantaged - is to disadvantage yourself -which is guaranteed to turn out for your advantage.

He does have surprising, secret purposes. I open a Bible, and His plans, startling, lie there barefaced. It’s hard to believe it, when I read it, and I have to come back to it many times, feel long across those words, make sure they are real. His love letter forever silences any doubts: “His secret purpose framed from the very beginning [is] to bring us to our full glory” (1 Corinthians 2:7 NEB).

Going ahead in the midst of the stressful circumstances and giving thanks in that moment - you can't simultaneously feel stress and gratitude at the same time. So as a parent, to go ahead and start to give thanks to God resets the whole family.

I think God calls us to small things, to faithfulness right where we are, to just do the next thing.