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

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

~ Randy Alcorn in Tell Me About Heaven
Two classes of human beings defy
psychological categorizing
and are full of surprises:
Poets and Saints.
~ Sigmund Freud

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

~ Will Rogers
I would like to
paint the way a bird sings.
~ Claude Monet
I loved Christmas
until I grew up and realized
I had to make it happen!
~ an exasperated customer at the Living Cornerstone bookstore
Doubt comes from a struggling mind.
Unbelief comes from a struggling will.
~ Chuck Missler
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

Is prayer your steering wheel
or your spare tire?

~ Corrie Ten Boom

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

~ 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
The best translation of the word "love"
is the name Jesus;
That will tell us everything about love
we need to know.
~ Canon Tallis
Planting seeds
inevitably
changes my feelings
about rain.
~ Luci Shaw (from her poem "Forecast")
Poetry takes something
that we know already
and turns it into something new.
~ T.S. Eliot

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

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

~ Dean Sherman/YWAM

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

~ unknown

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

~ Carissa Cooper

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

~ unknown
If you're going through Hell,
don't stop!
~ a great song I can't remember (anyone know?)
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
It is the nature of grace
always
to fill spaces
that have been empty.
~ Goethe

Remember that
the darkest hour
only lasts 60 minutes

~ on the girls' bathroom wall/Gordon College
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

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

~ Henry Van Dyke
a children's book is
any book
a child will read.
~ Madeleine L'Engle

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

When writing,
be more or less
specific

~ unknown

Room For One More

By Lisa LaLonde

With winter still a distant rumor,

a new stray came begging food and affection.

Cats inside carefully watching the intruder

dance with leaves on the lawn.

Our hearts cried, “No room at the Inn!”

but their noses sniffed curiously at our hands,

fresh with loving caresses of strange fur.

Our porch with its cardboard box and blanket

became a mirror of the Bethlehem stable.

Always room for life, for the compassion of God,

       always room for one more.


Now, with winter a harsh reality,

a new stray comes begging.

What delight to see – only today –

that he found the box and blanket

and rested for awhile.

Cats inside, paws at the window –

Do they see the hand of God in opening our hearts

       To the stranger, the babe in the manger?

Lisa LaLonde

© Christmas 1994