Shirley Thiessen

Experiencing grief – for me- is like having my life splayed out in a million shattered pieces. Nothing is like it was. For a long while, I believed that any beauty in my fragmented life was impossible. I was wrong. With God, beauty comes from ashes. Yes, my life is a very different design of intricate, coloured pieces. Never could I have imagined how different the view of my life would be. But,  with God helping me, I choose not to let grief destroy my potential for beauty & purpose.

C. S. Lewis

There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket – safe, dark, motionless, airless – it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell.

Henry Clay (H. C.) Trumbull

We can say, “Blessed is night, for it reveals to us the stars.” In the same way we can say, “Blessed is sorrow, for it reveals God’s comfort.” The floods washed away home and mill, all the poor man had in the world. But as he stood on the scene of his loss, after the water had subsided, broken-hearted and discouraged, he saw something shining in the bank which the waters had washed bare. “It looks like gold,” he said. It was gold. The flood which bad beggared him made him rich. So it is ofttimes in life.

Horatius Bonar

Christ is the wisdom of God; and in the knowledge of this Christ there is wisdom for you. Not wisdom only, but life, forgiveness, peace, glory, and an endless kingdom! Study Him! Acquaint yourself with Him! Whatever you are ignorant of, be not ignorant of Him. Whatever you overlook, overlook not Him. Whatever you lose, lose not Him. To gain Him is to gain eternal life, to gain a kingdom, to gain everlasting blessedness. To lose Him is to lose your soul, to lose God, to lose God’s favour, to lose God’s heaven, to lose the eternal crown!