“For years we've been telling God to get out of our schools, to get out of our government and to get out of our lives. And being the gentleman He is, I believe He has calmly backed out. How can we expect God to give us His blessing and His protection if we demand He leave us alone?”

“When we cry out to God as a result of our pain and spiritual brokenness He hears us and is compelled to move on our behalf because of His love for us. However, when we complain it is an indictment against His authority as a God who knows His plans for us, and it is an outright contradiction to the faith that we say we have in Him.”

“If you leave a bunch of eleven-year-olds to their own devices, what you get is Lord of the Flies. Like a lot of American kids, I read this book in school. Presumably it was not a coincidence. Presumably someone wanted to point out to us that we were savages, and that we had made ourselves a cruel and stupid world. This was too subtle for me. While the book seemed entirely believable, I didn't get the additional message. I wish they had just told us outright that we were savages and our world was stupid.”

“I rubbed my face with my hands. “Oh, God, what are You getting us into?” Olivia chuckled. “That’s an interesting way to put it. But I think sometimes the Lord puts us into impossible situations—or lets us get into them ourselves—just so He can show His might and power as He pulls us out.”

“I can imagine that if there existed a God who loved, the devil would be driven to destroy even the weakest, the most faulty imitation of love. Wouldn't he be afraid that the habit of love might grow, and wouldn't he try to trap us all into being traitors, into helping him extinguish love? If there is a God who uses us and makes his saints out of such material as we are, the devil too may have his ambitions; he may dream of training even such a person as myself... into being his saints, ready with borrowed fanaticism to destroy love wherever we find it.”

“If we never get out of our comfort zones we can’t grow into the places God has prepared for us.”

“Our days are numbered. One of the primary goals in our lives should be to prepare for our last day. The legacy we leave is not just in our possessions, but in the quality of our lives. What preparations should we be making now? The greatest waste in all of our earth, which cannot be recycled or reclaimed, is our waste of the time that God has given us each day.”