Selections from my copybook

When I posted the (rather LONG) list of books on my chairside table several weeks ago, one of the books I mentioned was my copybook, where I copy down favorite quotes, book passages, scripture, etc. Crissy Sharp suggested that I post some selections from that copybook, so here they are. And be forewarned, this post is a little long as well, but it was difficult to narrow down the options. Hope you enjoy the reading!

On imagination…
Imagination may become like that cave Ezekiel tells of wherein were all manner of unseemly and evil things; it may be a temple wherein self is glorified; it may be a chamber of horrors and dangers; but it may also be a House Beautiful. It is enough for us to remember that imagination is stored with those images supplied day by day whether by the cinema, the penny dreadful, by Homer or Shakespeare, by the great picture or the flaming shocker. – Charlotte Mason, Philosophy of Education

A favorite scripture …
In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength. – Isaiah 30:15

Who I am …
I am a magnet for all kinds of deeper wonderment
I am a wunderkind oh
I live the envelope pushed far enough to believe this
I am a princess on the way to my home
Destined to serve, destined to roam – from the Soundtrack of Narnia

Regarding God’s glory …
Glory is to God what style is to an artist. A painting by Vermeer, a sonnet by Donne, a Mozart aria – each is so rich with the style of the one who made it that to the connoisseur, it couldn’t have been made by anybody else, and the effect is staggering. The style of an artist brings you as close to the sound of his voice and the light in his eye as it is possible to get this side of actually shaking hands with him. In the words of Psalm 19:1, “The heavens are telling the glory of God.” It is the same thing. To the connoisseur, not just sunsets and starry nights, but dust storms, rain forests, garter snakes, and the human face are all unmistakably the work of a single hand. Glory is the outward manifestation of the hand in its handiwork just as holiness is the inward. To behold God’s glory, to sense God’s style, is the closest you can get to God this side of paradise, just as to read King Lear is the closest you can get to Shakespeare. Glory is what God looks like when for the time being all you have to look at him with is a pair of eyes. – Frederick Buechner, Beyond Words

From Robinson Crusoe …
And I add, for whoever shall read this, that whenever they come to a true sense of things, they will find deliverance from sin a much greater blessing that deliverance from affliction. – Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe

From a book God uses time-and-again to change my life …
We will rely on everything but God. He in turn will prepare us for grace by closing our favorite escape exits until there is only one way. – Rose Marie Miller, From Fear to Freedom

On learning …
… every good gift of knowledge and insight comes from above, that the Lord the Holy Spirit is the supreme educator of mankind, and that the culmination of all education is that personal knowledge of, and intimacy with, God, in which our being finds its fullest perfections. – Charlotte Mason

One of my favorite short fiction passages …
“That is where your [paintings] will hang in the spring,” Anna Schaeffer said to me, pointing to the walls.
I stared at her and felt a shock move through me.
“I would have done it this year,” she said. “But this old man would not let me.”
“He is still a boy this year,” Jacob Kahn said. “A boy should not rush to make his soul naked.” – Chaim Potok, My Name is Asher Lev

On home …
That house was a perfect house, whether you like food or sleep, or storytelling, or singing, or just sitting and thinking best, or a pleasant mixture of them all. Merely to be there was a cure for weariness, fear and sadness. – JRR Tolkein

Regarding one of my indulgences …
A hot bath! I cry, as I sit down in it; and again, as I lie flat, a hot bath! How exquisite a vespertine pleasure, how luxurious, fervid and fragrant a consolation for the rigours, the austerities, the renunciations of the day. – Rose Macaulay

Truth from the pen of a friend …
Grace [is] not only His death on a cross so I could go to heaven; it [is] his faithful pursuit of me even though I [am] completely unworthy. … I deserved the agony of never having what He created me to long for – Himself. … Imagine heaven – the joy of being in the presence of the living God in a glorified body that is always in communion with him because all of my desires and longings are met in him and I am able to completely and perfectly glorify Him. And the awe I will experience with a heart finally turned toward what is perfect. – Jennifer Jensen

Regarding salvation …
If we have only a legal-transaction understanding of salvation in which we are forgiven of our sins so we can go to heaven, then salvation essentially becomes a ticket to somewhere else. In this understanding, eternity is something that kicks in when we die. But Jesus did not teach this.
Jesus said that when we believe, we have crossed over from death to life. God always has been and always will be. And when I enter into a relationship with God through Christ, I am connected with God now and I will be connected with God forever. For Jesus, salvation is now.
I need a God for now.
I need healing now.
I need help now.
Yes, even greater things will happen someday.
But salvation is now. – Rob Bell, Velvet Elvis

And if you’re still with me, a favorite poem …
Batter my heart, three-person’d God; for, you
As yet but knocke, breathe, shine, and seek to mend,
That I may rise, and stand, o’erthorw mee, and bend
Your force, to breake, blowe, burn and make me new.
I, like a usurpt tower, to another due,
Labour to admit you, but Oh, to no end,
Reason, your viceroy in mee, mee should defend,
But is captiv’d, and proves weake or untrue.
Yet dearely I love you, and would be loved faine,
But am betroth’d unto your enemie;
Divorce mee, untie or breake that knot againe,
Take mee to you, imprison mee, for I
Except you enthrall mee, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me. – John Donne

I love all of these selections. Which one's your favorite?