“The spiritual response is too often a simplistic one: we abandon God or we blame God for abandoning us.”

“We stood and watched as God abandoned us, and then we did the best we could.”

“It is only through us that God lives. When we abandon him, he dies.”

“The earth is God's book but in our blindness, we have obliterated letters so we may say God has abandoned us. It is we who are illiterate.”

“To be one of God's lilies means an interior abandonment of the rarest kind. It means that we are to be infinitely passive, and yet infinitely active also; passive as regards self and its workings, active as regards attention and response to God. It is very hard to explain this so as to be understood But it means that we must lay down all the activity of the creature, as such, and must let only the activities of God work in us, and through us, and by us. Self must step aside, to let God work.”

“God does not abandon men, my son. Men abandon God.”