Restlessness and impatience change nothing except our peace and joy.

The pain of loneliness is one way in which he wants to get our attention. We may be earnestly desiring to be obedient and holy. But we may be missing the fact that it is here, where we happen to be at this moment and not in another place or another time, that we may learn to love Him - here where it seems He is not at work, where He seems obscure or frightening, where He is not doing what we expected Him to do, where He is most absent. Here and nowhere else is the appointed place. If faith does not got to work here, it will not work at all.

God will not protect you from anything that will make you more like Jesus.

It is God to whom and with whom we travel, and while He is the end of our journey, He is also at every stopping place.

We can't really tell how crooked our thinking is until we line it up with the straight edge of Scripture.

What God gives in answer to our prayers will always be the thing we most urgently need, and it will always be sufficient.

One step at a time, over the years, as I sought to plumb the mystery of suffering (which cannot be plumbed), I began to see that there is a sense in which everything is a gift. Even my widowhood.