We visited some friends this week for dinner and I noticed they had one of those glass-framed moving sandscapes. I used to love those as a kid. I was waiting to pick it up and change the scenery and when I couldn’t wait any longer, I tipped it this way and that, watching the sand fall and move into a new scene. There is something calming about these blessed inventions. When we read good books, especially the slow reading of words on a paper page that we turn with our fingers, we give ourselves time for these words to settle into our minds and we give ourselves time to consider well-crafted words and phrases, like the sand that settles into new forms when tilted to and fro. We behold beauty in those words and scenes that are formed afresh in our imaginations.
This year, in my corner of the online writing world, I plan to share quotes from books I’ve been reading, fresh scenes wondrously crafted that they may be like a fresh wind from the west to clear away the debris of the mind and bring little visions of light. And perhaps, you may just find a new book that piques your interest. Perhaps the turning of pages will bring a stillness and slowing down amidst the rush and speed of our lives and circumstances. Here below are a few quotes I’m sharing in February.
In Winter, we love to visit the Bavarian town of Leavenworth, WA as a family. On one of our trips, we found this tiny library, a miniature model of a little bookstore. It was about 10 inches tall. I couldn’t help but take a picture to remember it.
Love is what carries you, for it is always there, even in the dark, or most in the dark, but shining out at times like gold stitches in a piece of embroidery. ”
― Wendell Berry, Hannah Coulter
Photo by Catherine Kay Greenup on Unsplash
“There is always a cost to wrongdoing and it must fall on someone. Either the wrongdoer bears it or someone else must. This is true even if the wrong is not something that can be measured financially. The cost may be in reputation or relationship or health or something else. To forgive is to deny oneself revenge (Romans 12:17–21), to absorb the cost, to not exact repayment by inflicting on them the things they did to you in order to “even the score.” Therefore forgiveness is always expensive to the forgiver, but the benefits—at the very least within your heart, and at best in the restoration of relationship and a witness to the power of the gospel—outweigh the cost.”
― Timothy J. Keller, Forgive: Why Should I and How Can I?
“Humility, the place of entire dependence on God, is the first duty and the highest virtue of the creature, and the root of every virtue. And so pride, or the loss of this humility, is the root of every sin and evil.”
― Andrew Murray, Humility: The Journey Toward Holiness
Photo by The Cleveland Museum of Art on Unsplash
“The highest glory of the creature is in being only a vessel, to receive and enjoy and show forth the glory of God. It can do this only as it is willing to be nothing in itself, that God may be all. Water always fills first the lowest places.”
― Andrew Murray, Humility: The Journey Toward Holiness
Now I know what we were trying to stand for, and what I believe we did stand for: the possibility that among the world's wars and sufferings two people could love each other for a long time, until death and beyond, and could make a place for each other that would be a part of their love, as their love for each other would be a way of loving their place. This love would be one of the acts of greater love that holds and cherishes all the world.
― Wendell Berry, Hannah Coulter
Photo by Birmingham Museums Trust on Unsplash
It was the literacy that gave him his great joy at Dobson’s for in the schoolroom there was a shelf containing a few tattered books, given by some kindly citizen, and the boys were allowed to read them on Saturday nights. Few made use of the privilege, for they couldn’t read well enough, but Job read them all… All the books had pictures in them. The books were like rooms in a great house and the pictures were lamps lit in the room to show them to him. As he read his dreams slowly changed…
― Elizabeth Goudge, The Dean’s Watch
Photo by McGill Library on Unsplash