Frederick Buechner

"Lord, I believe; help my unbelief is the best any of us can do really, but thank God it is enough."

"If we are to believe he is really alive with all that that implies, then we have to believe without proof. And of course that is the only way it could be. If it could be somehow proved, then we would have no choice but to believe. We would lose our freedom not to believe. And in the very moment that we lost that freedom, we would cease to be human beings. Our love of God would have been forced upon us, and love that is forced is of course not love at all. Love must be freely given. Love must live in the freedom not to love; it must take risks. Love must be prepared to suffer even as Jesus on the Cross suffered, and part of that suffering is doubt."

"And now brothers, I will ask you a terrible question, and God knows I ask it also of myself. Is the truth beyond all truths, beyond the stars, just this: that to live without him is the real death, that to die with him the only life?"

"With words as valueless as poker chips, we play games whose object it is to keep us from seeing each other’s cards."

"If you have never known the power of Gods love, then maybe it is because you have never asked to know it - I mean really asked, expecting an answer."

"Life is grace. Sleep is forgiveness. The night absolves. Darkness wipes the slate clean, not spotless to be sure, but clean enough for another days chalking."

"Thus, when you wake up in the morning, called by God to be a self again, if you want to know who you are, watch your feet. Because where your feet take you, that is who you are."

"If you dont have doubts youre either kidding yourself or asleep. Doubts are the ants in the pants of faith. They keep it awake and moving."

"Of the seven deadly sins, anger is possibly the most fun. To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savor to the last toothsome morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back--in many ways it is a feast fit for a king. The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you."

"The place where God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the worlds deep hunger coincide."

"There is a fragrance in the air, a certain passage of a song, an old photograph falling out from the pages of a book, the sound of somebodys voice in the hall that makes your heart leap and fills your eyes with tears. Who can say when or how it will be that something easters up out of the dimness to remind us of a time before we were born and after we will die?"

"Faith is stepping out into the unknown with nothing to guide us but a hand just beyond our grasp."