“The term is over; the holidays have begun. The dream is ended, this is the morning. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world had only been the cover and the title page; now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read, which goes on forever; in which every chapter is better than the one before.”
~C.S. Lewis – The Last Battle
“I am not trying to rob you! I’m trying to help you. All your long years we’ve been friends. Trust me as you once did. Let it go.”
~Gandolf
“If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world”
~C.S. Lewis
“There are things to be seen and learned in the apparent wastelands which cannot be seen and learned in places of comfort, convenience, and company. God intends to keep us in a place where there is nothing else we can count on. Let’s not ask for shortcuts. Let’s keep alert for the wonders our Guide will show us in the wilderness.”
~Elizabeth Elliot
“I do not know what it means. But the spell of it has been on me all my life.”
~Reepicheep
And only heaven is better than to walk with Christ at midnight, over moonless seas. He is indeed enough. He is not all we would ask for, if we were honest, but it is precisely when we do not have what we would ask for, and only then, that we can clearly perceive His all-sufficiency. It is when the sea is moonless that the Lord has become my Light.
~Amy Carmichael
“I was the lion who forced you to join with Aravis. I was the cat who comforted you among the houses of the dead. I was the lion who drove the jackals from you while you slept. I was the lion who gave the horses the new strength of fear for the last mill so that you should reach King Lune in time. And I was the lion you do not remember who pushed the boat in which you lay, a child near death, so that it came to shore where a man sat, wakeful at midnight, to receive you.”
~C.S. Lewis, The Chronicles of Narnia – The Horse and His Boy
“God gives us the vision, then He takes us down to the valley to batter us into the shape of the vision, and it is in the valley that so many of us faint and give way. Every vision will be made real if we will have patience.”
~Oswald Chambers
Others May – You May Not
If God has called you to be really like Christ in all your spirit, He will draw you into a life of crucifixion and humility and put on you such demands of obedience, that He will not allow you to follow other Christians, and in many ways He will seem to let other good people do things which He will not let you do.
Others can brag on themselves, and their work, on their success, on their writings, but the Holy Spirit will not allow you to do any such thing, and if you begin it, He will lead you into some deep mortification that will make you despise yourself and all your good works.
The Lord will let others be honored and put forward, and keep you hid away in obscurity because He wants to produce some choice fragrant fruit for His glory, which can be produced only in the shade.
Others will be allowed to succeed in making money, but it is likely God will keep you poor because he wants you to have something far better than gold and that is a helpless dependence on Him; that He may have the privilege of supplying your needs day by day – out of an unseen treasury.
God will let others be great, but He will keep you small. He will let others do a great work for Him and get credit for it, but He will make you work and toil on without knowing how much you are doing; and then to make your work still more precious, He will let others get the credit for the work you have done, and this will make your reward ten times greater when He comes.
The Holy Spirit will put strict watch over you, with a jealous love, and will rebuke you for little words and feelings, or for wasting your time, which other Christians never seem distressed over.
So make up your mind that God is an infinite Sovereign, and has a right to do what He pleases with His own, and He will not explain to you a thousand things which may puzzle you in His dealing with you. He will wrap you up in a jealous love, and let other people say and do many things that you cannot do or say.
Settle it forever, that you are to deal directly with the Holy Spirit, and that He is to have the privilege of tying your tongue, or chaining your hand, or closing your eyes, in ways that others are not dealt with.
Now, when you are so possessed with the Living God that you are, in your secret heart, pleased and delighted over this particular personal, private, jealous guardianship and management of the Holy Spirit over your life, you will have found the vestibule of heaven.
~G. D. Watson (1845-1924)
The Unanswered Prayer
She asked to be made like her Savior.
He took her right then at her word.
And sent her a heart-crushing burden
Till the depths of her soul were stirred.She wanted a meek, lowly spirit
The work he gave answered that cry.
Till some who had once been companions
With a pitying smile passed her by.She asked to lean hard on her savior,
He took human props quite away.
Till no earthly friend could give comfort,
And she could do nothing but pray.She had prayed to be made like the savior,
And the burdens He gave her to bear
Had been but the great Sculptor’s teachings
To help answer her earnest prayer.
~Author Unknown