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

~ Henry Van Dyke

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
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

Remember that
the darkest hour
only lasts 60 minutes

~ on the girls' bathroom wall/Gordon College
Poetry takes something
that we know already
and turns it into something new.
~ T.S. Eliot

When writing,
be more or less
specific

~ unknown
I loved Christmas
until I grew up and realized
I had to make it happen!
~ an exasperated customer at the Living Cornerstone bookstore
Two classes of human beings defy
psychological categorizing
and are full of surprises:
Poets and Saints.
~ Sigmund Freud
Planting seeds
inevitably
changes my feelings
about rain.
~ Luci Shaw (from her poem "Forecast")

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

~ St. Francis of Assisi

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

~ unknown
I would like to
paint the way a bird sings.
~ Claude Monet
Doubt comes from a struggling mind.
Unbelief comes from a struggling will.
~ Chuck Missler
All shall be well
and all shall be well
and all manner of things shall be well.
~ Julian of Norwich
The first demand any work of art
makes upon us is surrender.
Look.  Listen.  Receive.
Get yourself out of the way.
~ C.S. Lewis
Creativity
is a way
of living
Life
~ Madeleine L'Engle

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

~ Oswald Chambers

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

~ Carissa Cooper
If you're going through Hell,
don't stop!
~ a great song I can't remember (anyone know?)
a children's book is
any book
a child will read.
~ Madeleine L'Engle
The best translation of the word "love"
is the name Jesus;
That will tell us everything about love
we need to know.
~ Canon Tallis
When you have exhausted all the possibilities,
remember this -
you haven't.
~ Thomas Edison

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

~ Dean Sherman/YWAM
It is the nature of grace
always
to fill spaces
that have been empty.
~ Goethe

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

~ unknown

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

~ 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

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

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

~ Abraham Lincoln

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

~ Randy Alcorn in Tell Me About Heaven

Is prayer your steering wheel
or your spare tire?

~ Corrie Ten Boom

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

~ Will Rogers

Emmaus Road

for Sara                                                                                    Luke 24:13-35
You and I were walking
            companions since we had known him
                        together.
As we walked
            we spoke of him
                        our sorrow, shared and burning
                        his love a burden to us now.
A man approached -
            how we did not recognize him
                        I’ll never understand.
But he walked with us, like us,
            and talked - now I see it,
                        feel it, his words becoming
                        more than his message
                                                his voice the message
                        as he opened up the ways of God - his ways.
We drank him in, you and I.
His was the only light heart in our dismal time.
We begged him - linger and eat, talk more with us.
He stayed, and suddenly - like mist lifting - we saw,
            saw what our hearts knew, but our minds could not conceive.
His voice, his form, his identity merging, our memory of him becoming
            something new, something to carry us into the future.

Did not our hearts burn within us?

He vanished - but now
            every time I look at you, I hear his voice -
            walk with you, and I feel his stride beside me -
            eat with you, and I see his hands breaking the bread -
Our hearts together begging him
            to stay and be known.
           
Lisa B. LaLonde
©October 21, 1997 revised October 3, 1998