I would like to
paint the way a bird sings.
~ Claude Monet

You will ask me where I get my ideas...I cannot tell you with certainty; they come unsummoned...in the silence of the nights, early in the morning... tones that sound, and roar and storm about me until I have set them down in notes.

~ Ludwig Von Beethoven

Hope means hoping
when things are hopeless,
or it is no virtue at all.
Faith means believing the incredible,
or it has no virtue at all.

~ G.K. Chesterton

Spiritual warfare
isn't just casting out demons;
it's Spirit-controlled thinking
and attitudes.

~ Dean Sherman/YWAM
Doubt comes from a struggling mind.
Unbelief comes from a struggling will.
~ Chuck Missler
Two classes of human beings defy
psychological categorizing
and are full of surprises:
Poets and Saints.
~ Sigmund Freud

When writing,
be more or less
specific

~ unknown
Do not have your concert first, and then
tune your instrument afterwards.
Begin the day with the Word of God and prayer,
and get first of all into harmony with Him.
~ Hudson Taylor

Is prayer your steering wheel
or your spare tire?

~ Corrie Ten Boom

Use what talents you possess:
the woods would be very silent
if no birds sang there
except those that sang best.

~ Henry Van Dyke

"Maybe you've not yet tasted
your favorite food"
(regarding the feast prepared for us in heaven) 

~ Randy Alcorn in Tell Me About Heaven
It is the nature of grace
always
to fill spaces
that have been empty.
~ Goethe
The best translation of the word "love"
is the name Jesus;
That will tell us everything about love
we need to know.
~ Canon Tallis
Beware of paying attention
or going back to what you once were,
when God wants you to be something
that you have never been.
~ Oswald Chambers
a children's book is
any book
a child will read.
~ Madeleine L'Engle

Even if you're on the right track
you'll get run over if you just sit there.

~ Will Rogers
When you have exhausted all the possibilities,
remember this -
you haven't.
~ Thomas Edison

When God wants to show you what human nature is like separated from Himself, He shows it to you in yourself.

~ Oswald Chambers

Experience is something you don't get
until just after you need it.

~ unknown

Blessed are they who can laugh at themselves,
for they shall never cease to be amused.

~ unknown
Creativity
is a way
of living
Life
~ Madeleine L'Engle

Start by doing what's necessary,
then what's possible,
and suddenly you are doing
the impossible.

~ St. Francis of Assisi
The first demand any work of art
makes upon us is surrender.
Look.  Listen.  Receive.
Get yourself out of the way.
~ C.S. Lewis
Poetry takes something
that we know already
and turns it into something new.
~ T.S. Eliot

Remember that
the darkest hour
only lasts 60 minutes

~ on the girls' bathroom wall/Gordon College
If you're going through Hell,
don't stop!
~ a great song I can't remember (anyone know?)
All shall be well
and all shall be well
and all manner of things shall be well.
~ Julian of Norwich

My best friend is a person who
will give me a book
I have not read.

~ Abraham Lincoln

One good thing about being wrong
is the joy it brings to others.

~ unknown
I loved Christmas
until I grew up and realized
I had to make it happen!
~ an exasperated customer at the Living Cornerstone bookstore
Planting seeds
inevitably
changes my feelings
about rain.
~ Luci Shaw (from her poem "Forecast")

Don`t cry yet;
there`s still God!

~ Carissa Cooper

Coffee With Lucy

You stir your coffee
            as you have always:
            cream, two heaping spoons of sugar
and reach over for my napkin
            take it, as always,
                        promising to share it.
Your eyes pass over my face
            my beard, my wrinkled eyes.
I feel you kiss them
            as you smile over your cup.
Here in the airport lounge
            we are just an old man
                        and an old woman
                                                sitting in the sunny window.
Do they know that when I look at you
            you are not an old woman
                        but ever a girl.
Your soft cheeks flush in response to my gaze
            as I feel the memories fill me and
                        culminate in this one moment.
Your chatter, lovely to my ears,
            surrounds me
                        though I drift from
                        the meaning of your words,
                                                and I think that you are beautiful,
                                                            old woman.
The crowds around us don’t see
            that you will always be
                        ageless
            and I will always have
                        coffee with Lucy.
           
Lisa B. LaLonde
© December 28, 1996 revised August 19, 1997