John Townsend Trowbridge Quotes

“Where are You?” can be both a protest against a problem and a search for understanding and perspective.

I can’t keep count of the times when I have seen how hard times make people much more relationally accessible than they were before their difficulty.

Whatever our situation, we feel some sense of confusion, anxiety, and helplessness. At the same time, we think about God and wonder where He is.

Hope is impossible unless we experience empathy and identification. We cannot feel hopeful that things will be OK unless someone understands what we are going through and gets it.

We want to know that life is good. Not perfect but good. Not problem free, but good. Good in some way that we did not anticipate. Good in some way that connects us to God, others, and our purposes in life.

Where do you go when hard times hit? Most of the time, our tendency is to enter our internal cave…we naturally shut down, withdraw from it all, and try to figure things out on our own, reemerging from life when we have some sense of centeredness.

…faith in God creates the possibility that even if our situations do not change, life can be good.

…the big picture of our spiritual growth is not an event but the development of the habit of relationship with God.

David, the man after God’s own heart, got right to it and spilled out his guts about his experience: “How long, O LORD? Will You forget me forever?”

The all-enclosing freehold of Content.

With years a richer life begins,
The spirit mellows:
Ripe age gives tone to violins,
Wine, and good fellows.

The message of Scripture is that God wants us to connect both with Him and also with each other.

Our days, our deeds, all we achieve or are,
Lay folded in our infancy; the things
Of good or ill we choose while yet unborn.

It is a comfort to us that Jesus didn’t suffer in silence or with a smile.

God wants to help us and will bear our burdens.