Sermon quotes on darkness
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The darker the night, the brighter the stars,
The deeper the grief, the closer is God!
V. Raymond Edman
Never doubt in the dark what God showed you in the light
Francis of Assisi
All the darkness in the world cannot extinguish the light of a single candle.
Francis Frangipane
God can never entrust His Kingdom to anyone who has not been broken of pride, for pride is the armour of darkness itself.
Helen Keller
Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn, whatever state I may be in, therein to be content.
Helen Keller
Unless we form the habit of going to the Bible in bright moments as well as in trouble, we cannot fully respond to its consolations because we lack equilibrium between light and darkness.
Carl Jung
Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.
Andrew Strom
Many deceptions only appeal to us because there is something inside us that “wants” to believe them. They are seductive because of darkness and wrong motives in our own lives. We must search our hearts and root these out.
Nancy Ortberg
Sometimes you just have to sit and stay in the darkness. Sit and stay when every cell in your body is telling you to move and medicate. Sit and stay, wait. Let the dark sky envelope you, because if you move too quickly, your eyes will never adjust, and if they never adjust, they will never see. At least they’ll never see what they are supposed to see.
Nancy Ortberg
Often what emerges out of destruction is life of a deeper and sweeter quality than before. But it takes pain and darkness to get there.
Sarah Williams
I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.
Mary Oliver
Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this, too, was a gift.
John of the Cross
Live in faith and hope, though it be in darkness, for in this darkness God protects the soul. Cast your care upon God for you are His and He will not forget you. Do not think that He is leaving you alone, for that would be to wrong Him.
Plato
We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark: the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.
Taken from Leadership, Vol. 1, no. 2.
Leonard Cohen
There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.
Wendell Berry
“Love is what carries you, for it is always there, even in the dark, or most in the dark, but shining out at times like gold stitches in a piece of embroidery.”
Lisa Sharon Harper
It’s important to note that God does not obliterate the darkness; rather, God names it and limits it—puts boundaries on it. The boundary is the light.
The Very Good Gospel, The Crown Publishing Group, 2016, p. 21.
C.S. Lewis
Why must holy places be dark places?
Frederick Buechner
Unless those who proclaim the Gospel acknowledge honestly that darkness . . . they might as well save their breath for all the lasting difference their proclaiming will make to anybody.
Now and Then: A Memoir of Vocation (San Francisco: HarperOne, 1983), 46.
Dorothy Thompson
Fear grows in darkness; if you think there’s a bogeyman around, turn on the light.
Dick Ryan
Healing begins when, in the face of our own darkness, we recognize our helplessness and surrender our need for control… we face what is, and we ask for mercy.
Puritan Prayer
Lord, in the daytime stars can be seen from the deepest wells.
And the deeper the wells the brighter thy stars shine;
Let me find thy light in my darkness,
Thy life in my death,
Thy joy in my sorrow,
Thy grace in my sin,
Thy riches in my poverty,
Thy glory in my valley.
Rowan Williams
The truth is simpler… and more alarming. [This] is the end of religious experience, the very opposite of mysticism…. We have been going round the paths, and suddenly we see our path goes round a hole, a bottomless black pit. In the middle of all our religious constructs… is an emptiness… However it is reached, the experience is the same: the breakdown of order, the breakdown of schemes and maps. There are no guiding lights in the darkness; there is no straightforward religious experience we can hold onto. If we pray at all, we talk to an iron heaven, devoid of signs.
A Ray of Darkness (Cowley Publications, 1995)
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