Draper's Quotations on Afflictions
Affliction is able to drown out every earthly voice. . . but the voice
of eternity within a man it cannot drown. When by the aid of
affliction all irrelevant voices are brought to silence, it can be
heard, this voice within.
Søren Aabye Kierkegaard (1813-1855)
Affliction is God's shepherd dog to drive us back to the fold.
Affliction, like the iron-smith, shapes as it smites.
Afflictions are but the shadow of God's wings.
George Macdonald (1824-1905)
Afflictions make the heart more deep, more experimental, more knowing
and profound, and so, more able to hold, to contain, and beat more.
John Bunyan (1628-1688)
All your fingernails grow with inconvenient speed except the broken
one.
Ogden Nash (1902-1971)
As in nature and in the arts, so in grace: it is rough treatment that
gives souls, as well as stones, their luster. The more the diamond is
cut, the brighter it sparkles, and in what seems hard dealings God has
no end in view but to perfect our graces.
Thomas Guthrie (1803-1873)
As out of Jesus' affliction came a new sense of God's love and a new
basis for love between men, so out of our affliction we may grasp the
splendor of God's love and how to love one another; Thus the
consummation of the two commandments was on Golgotha; and the Cross
is, at once, their image and their fulfillment.
Malcolm Muggeridge (1903-1990)
As the sea is subject to storm and tempests, so is every man in the
world.
John Donne (1572-1631)
By afflictions God is spoiling us of what otherwise might have spoiled
us. When he makes the world too hot for us to hold, we let it go.
Sir John Powell (1633-1696)
Calamity is the perfect glass wherein we truly see and know ourselves.
Sir William Davenant (1606-1668)
God has many sharp cutting instruments and rough files for the
polishing of his jewels; and those he especially loves and means to
make the most resplendent, he often uses his tools upon.
Archbishop Robert Leighton (1611-1684)
God ne'er afflicts us more than our desert,
Though he may seem to overact his part
Sometimes he strikes us more than flesh can bear
But yet still less than grace can suffer here.
Robert Herrick (1591-1674)
God's ways seem dark, but, soon or late,
They touch the shining hills of day.
John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892)
Good when he gives, supremely good,
Nor less when he denies,
E'en crosses from his sovereign hand
Are blessings in disguise.
James Hervey (1714-1758)
If God has made your cup sweet, drink it with grace. If he has made it
bitter; drink it in communion with him.
Oswald Chambers (1874-1917)
Men think that God is destroying them when he is tuning them.
Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1887)
On the top of those very billows which look as if they would overwhelm
us walks the Son of God.
Oswald Chambers (1874-1917)
Open thy gate of mercy, gracious God! My soul flies through these
wounds to seek out thee.
William Shakespeare (1564-1616)
Take the cross he sends as it is, and not as you imagine it to be.
Cornelia Augusta Peacock Connelly (1809-1879)
The flame will not corrode or blacken gold, for fire burns it pure and
clean, and gives it a shining color.
Saint Mechthild of Magdeburg (C. 1210-C. 1280)
The Lord gets his best soldiers out of the highlands of affliction.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834-1892)
The only way to meet affliction is to pass through it solemnly,
slowly, with humility and faith, as the Israelites passed through the
sea. Then its very waves of misery will divide and become to us a
wall, on the right side and on the left, until the gulf narrows before
our eyes and we land safe on the opposite shore.
Dinah Maria Mulock Crane (1826-1887)
There are disasters to be faced by the one who is in real fellowship
with the Lord Jesus Christ. God has never promised to keep us immune
from trouble. He says, "I will be with him in trouble," which is a
very different thing.
Oswald Chambers (1874-1917)
This is the blessing of affliction to those who will lie still and not
struggle in a cowardly or a resentful way. It is God speaking to Job
out of the whirlwind, and saying, "In the sunshine and the warmth you
cannot meet me; but in the hurricane and the darkness when wave after
wave has swept down and across the soul, you shall see my form and
hear my voice and know that your Redeemer lives."
Frederick William Robertson (1816-1853)
Turn your scars into stars.
Robert Harold Schuller (1926- )
When I am in the cellar of affliction, I look for the Lord's choicest
wines.
Samuel Rutherford (1600-1661)
When it is dark enough, men see the stars.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)
When our faith, hope, and love ends, God's begins.
Chris Anderson
Who in this mortal life would see
The Light that is beyond all light,
Beholds it best by going forth
Into the darkness of the night.
Angelus Silesius (1624-1677)
-Edythe Draper, Draper's Book of Quotations for the
Christian World (Wheaton: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., 1992).