Quotes about Growth

A tree trunk the size of a man grows from a blade as thin as a hair. A tower nine stories high is built from a small heap of earth.

If we look for ways to get rid of necessary pain, we'll be disillusioned or misled. For people who define real change as the elimination of inevitable struggle, the final chapters will be terribly disappointing.

Evangelicals sometimes expect too much or, to put it more precisely, we look for a kind of change God hasn't promised. It's possible to expect too little, but under-expectation is usually a cynical reaction to dashed hopes for too much. We manage to interpret biblical teaching to support our longing for perfection. As a result, we measure our progress by standards we will never meet until heaven.

We must come to the Bible with the purpose of self-exposure consciously in mind. I suspect not many people make more than a token stab in that direction. It's extremely hard work. It makes Bible study alternately convicting and reassuring, painful and soothing, puzzling and calming, and sometimes dull - but not for long if our purpose is to see ourselves better.

We'll never abandon ourselves to the Spirit as long as we think we can change without Him.

Sometimes men are still boys, only wearing bigger clothes, until God takes them by the suspenders and gives them a good shake.

I suppose I should make all the skis six foot and let Leif grow into them. That way we could all use them easy enough." He shook his head. "I know my wife would love to ski again. You ever seen anyone carry a baby in a sling or backpack while on skis?

Was she like the prairie, only slowly yielding to God's plow in her life? She needed busting, then backsetting, and finally after snow and sun and rain, the seeds could be planted that would sprout into living wheat.

There's no such thing is aging, but maturing and knowledge. It's beautiful, I call that beauty.

Train up a fig tree in the way it should go, and when you are old sit under the shade of it.

You are too young to know how the world changes everyday,' said Mrs Creakle, 'and how the people in it pass away. But we all have to learn it, David; some of us when we are young, some of us when we are old, some of us at all times in our lives.

There have been occasions in my later life (I suppose as in most lives) when I have felt for a time as if a thick curtain had fallen on all its interest and romance, to shut me out from anything save dull endurance any more. Never has that curtain dropped so heavy and blank, as when my way in life lay stretched out straight before me through the newly-entered road of apprenticeship to Joe.