“My breath caught in wonder and surprise and I remembered that during the darkest of hours, God is. ”

“I've met the folk that have the perfect garlands and sprays and wreaths, the folk that live in Williamsburg-style houses. And I've met the folk that live at the edge of town in two-bedroom ranch houses that have Frosty the Snowman, lights playing tag around the roof, and a Rudolph stuck askew somewhere on the lawn. I'd rather sit in the home of the atter with and errant couch spring poking my derriere because, truthfully, they're glad to have me, and they never look at my shoes and wonder where I'd been before I got there. ”

“I guess this thing we call faith is a climb. I always wanted to think of it as a big slide straight into the arms of God who waits at the bottom to catch us. But instead, He's a God who's on top of things - & like any mountain you climb, the closer we get to Him, the steeper the terrain.”

“I just don't see the point of not eating cheese. I mean, if God didn't want us to eat cheese, would he have let man invent it?”

“Now I find that what life was making of me, what God was making of me, was not an arrow to trace a path through the sky, but the hub of a wheel. I am the intersection, I am the connection between them all, and the purpose I've been given isn't mine alone. It's for all of us to share. What I needed wasn't something I could take. What I needed was something I could give.”

“God wasn't giving me a megaphone. He was telling me to shut up. To be still and know.”

“Gus, its never too late for redemption. The scars never run too deep, so deep that God is not there.""I should know this. I minister to scarred people everyday. It just feels impossible when the scars are your own, or are those of the person you wronged so fully""It feels different when its you""Why is it the good you do seems like a drop in the bucket but the evil spreads for miles & miles”