The next best thing?

"Well, Andrew," Dawtie said, "if the Lord hasn't appeared in His own likeness to deliver me, He's done the next best thing."
"Dawtie," answered Andrew, "the Lord never does the next best. The thing He does is always better than the thing He does not!"
-"The Elect Lady" by George MacDonald

If only we could learn this lesson and remember it! Again, it comes back to trust; if we truly believed that God loves us—that He is good—we would trust Him. And He is, He really is.

Quotes from a hilltop

I am a voracious reader.

I want to list a couple of quotes from a book I recently read by Stephanie Grace Whitson:

"Storytellers are usually eloquent speakers. He is one of the best. When he finishes I realize that the greatest story he has ever told required no eloquence at all. Simple words--sin, debt, paid, cross, faith."

"The story is that Michelangelo was asked how he could look at a block of stone and get out from it such a wondrous thing as the 'David'. The master shrugged his shoulders and said, 'It is easy. I just knock off what doesn't look like David.' I think it is in the letter to Rome that Paul writes of God determining to make us look like Christ. The phrase, I believe, is, 'conformed to the image of his Son,' and I am thinking that would be good . . . for me . . . to be loving and wise as was Christ. And then I realize, that is what is happening since I believed. God knocks off what doesn't look like Christ. Of course, for God to make [me] look like Christ is much more difficult than for Michelangelo to form marble into a beautiful man. For human transformations, it takes the whole of life . . . and sometimes it hurts [ . . .]"