Welcome to The Week In Words, where we share quotes from the last week’s reading. If something you read this past week  inspired you, caused you to laugh, cry, think, dream, or just resonated with you in some way, please share it with us, attributing it to its source, which can be a book, newspaper, blog, Facebook — anything that you read. More information is here.

From a friend’s Facebook:

“God’s solution is sometimes different. He does not always lift people out of the situation. He does not pluck them out of the darkness. He becomes the light in the darkness, the peace in the midst of the conflict….” Patricia St. John

Reminds me of a plaque I had some years ago that said something like, “Sometimes God stills the storm, and sometimes He stills His child in the midst of the storm.”

From Lisa‘s Twitter feed:

God’s self-exaltation is not because he’s incomplete without praise, but because we’re not complete without it. ~ John Piper

I mentioned some time back a professor bringing up a rhetorical question without really answering it and it causing me some problems for years. It was on this topic, and this quote helps immensely. I had come to that conclusion before, that God’s wanting our praise had more to do with our need of it than his desire for it, but I love the way Piper put it.

From another friend’s Facebook:

“Failure…the opportunity to start over again with more knowledge than you had before.”

One of the most valuable sermons I ever heard, one that has stuck with me for decades, was one in college having to do with failure. I wasn’t failing, but I was struggling more than I ever had and felt like I was failing, and of course have had many individual failures throughout life. It was such a blessing to know failure was not an end in itself.

And finally, from this blog which I discovered while searching for something else:

“We ought to give thanks for all fortune: If it is ‘good’ because it is good, if ‘bad’ because it works in us patience, humility and the contempt of this world and the hope of our eternal country.” ~ C.S. Lewis

If you’ve read anything that particularly spoke to you that you’d like to share, please either list it in the comments below or write a post on your blog and then put the link to that post (not your general blog link) in Mr. Linky below. I do ask that only family-friendly quotes be included.

I hope you’ll visit some of the other participants as well and glean some great thoughts to ponder. And don’t forget to leave a comment here, even if you don’t have any quotes to share! 🙂