We’re moving offices soon, which has given me a chance to go through some old files. At the back of a drawer, I found a long-forgotten file with quotes I had collected, most of them typed on a typewriter, which should indicate how long they have been there! Here are just a few of my favorites:
“God uses broken things. It takes broken soil to produce a crop, broken clouds to give rain, broken grain to give bread, broken bread to give strength. It is the broken alabaster box that gives forth perfume—it is Peter, weeping bitterly, who returns to greater power than ever.” —Vance Havner, speaker and preacher
“The paradox of prayer is that we have to learn how to pray while we can only receive it as a gift.” —Henri J.M. Nouwen, priest and spiritual writer
“In the pure, strong hours of the morning, when the soul of the day is at its best, lean upon the window sill of God and look into his face, and get the orders for the day. Then go out into the day with the sense of a hand upon your shoulder and not a chip.” —E. Stanley Jones, missionary and theologian
“It takes humility to acknowledge our need for forgiveness—and even more to accept it, because guilt is the last stronghold of pride; it represents my opinion of myself. Forgiveness is not something I can do for myself. It is something only God or you can bestow on me.” —William Sloane Coffin, minister and chaplain
“Prayer really does things. It cannot change God’s intention, but it does change God’s action. God had long intended Isaiah to be his prophet. When Isaiah said, ‘Here am I, send me,’ he did not alter in the least the divine purpose, but he did release it. God could do then what before he could not.” —Harry Emerson Fosdick, founding minister of Riverside Church (where I used to sing in the choir)
“There is, immediately in front of us, an appointed task, a call: some difficult, clear, utterly simple thing the Lord is asking us to do. It is not a general admonition to whoever might happen to be standing about. It is instead an utterly private request whispered, as it were into each one’s ear. What the Lord is asking me, he is asking no one else. More than likely, it is a request with no particular glamour of notoriety attached to it. And if I pay attention, the Lord leaves me in no doubt about it. Especially if I ask in prayer.” —Emilie Griffin, author
