Frederick Buechner - A Room Called Remember

Frederick Buechner, a presbyterian minister, hailed by New York Time as the finest religious writer in America, and a finalist for Pulitzer Prize(Godric). For me, he is just a master of language...You can read through his books as if you are reading a poem. The phrases are so beautifully written is his books. You just feel like he's talking to you as a friend, when you actually are reading a religious book.

* Love God. We have heard the word so often that we no longer hear them. They are too loud to hear, too big to take in. We know the words so much by heart that we scarcely know them any longer as words spoken to the heart out of a mystery beyond all knowing. We take the words so much for granted that we hardly stop to wonder where they are seeking to take us. It is God you shall love first before you love anything else, and you shall love him with all that you are and all that you have it in you to become - whatever that means, whatever that involves. The words don't explain. They just proclaim and command.

* God knows we have all had our wilderness and our temptations too - not the temptation to work evil probably, because by grace or luck we don't have what it takes for more than momentary longings in that direction, but the temptation to settle for the lesser good, which is evil enough and maybe a worst one - to settle for niceness and usefulness eloquence instead of for truth.

* Faith is a way of waiting - never quite knowing, never quite hearing or seeing, because in the darkness we are all but a little lost. Faith waits even so, delivered at least from that final despair which gives up waiting altogether because it sees nothing left worth waiting for. Faith waits - for the opening of a door, the sound of footsteps in the times when you alll but give up hoope of ever hearing it. And when at moments you think you do hear it, the question is: Can it possibly be, impossibly be, the one voice of all voices?

* The world is full of dark shadows to be sure, both the world without and the world within, and the road we've all set off on is long and hard and often hard to find, but the word is trust. Trust the deepest intuitions of your own heart. Trust the source of your own truest gladness. Trust the road. Above all else, trust him. Trust him. Amen.