Inspirations from Soul Survivor

I've been reading Soul Survivor by Philip Yancey.  In this book he tells about people who have helped him see what it truly means to be a follower of Christ.  The subtitle of the book is How My Faith Survived the Church.  Quite an interesting book to read.  And now I am inspired to read some other authors.  Authors I had heard of, but to be honest I thought they were a bit "heady" for me.  I just usually prefer lighter types of reading.  But now I want to read some of Annie Dillard's books and some of Frederich Buechner's books.  I didn't even know that Buechner wrote novels.  Here's a bit of what Yancey wrote about them.

It’s all a matter of keeping my eyes open. Beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will sense them. The least we can do is try to be there…so that creation need not play to an empty house. Annie Dillard quoted by Philip Yancey in Soul Survivor p. 232


What is the particular brand of holiness each day brings? Annie Dillard summarized by Philip Yancey in Soul Survivor p. 234


We go to nature once we have our theology and let her fill the words – awe, glory, beauty, terror – with meaning. Philip Yancey in Soul Survivor p. 235


Separate yourself from your work. A book you made isn’t you any more than is a chair you made, or soup. It’s just something you made once. If you ever want to make another one, it, too, will be just another hat in the ring, another widow’s mite, another broken offering which God had long understood is the best we humans can do – we’re forgiven in advance. Annie Dillard quoted by Philip Yancey in Soul Survivor p.246


In searching for God, many people tend to look for the miraculous and supernatural. Instead we should be attending to the ordinary: waking and sleeping and above all dreaming, what we remember and what we forget, what makes us smile and what makes us cry, what delights and what depresses us. In the most commonplace events of a day, God speaks. Frederick Buechner summarized by Philip Yancey in Soul Survivor p. 259


These quotes remind me to see God in the ordinariness of my life.  It is so easy to be blinded to what we see and experience everyday.  But when my eyes are opened and my mind is ready, I am so richly blessed as my heart and mind are pointed to God by what I see and experience in my life!