A Quote by Tove Jansson

The thing about God, she thought, is that He usually does help, but not until you've made an effort on your own. — © Tove Jansson
The thing about God, she thought, is that He usually does help, but not until you've made an effort on your own.
You are not called to believe in your love to God, but in God's love to you! Do not argue, 'I cannot love God! I have striven to my uttermost to do so, but have failed in all my endeavors, until in despair I have abandoned the thought and relinquished the attempt.' Be it so- no effort of your own can strike a spark of love to God from your heart. Nor does God demand the task at your hands. All that He requires of you is faith in His love, as embodied and expressed in Jesus Christ to poor sinners.
Nature does at least what she can to translate into visible form the wealth of the creative formula. By the vastness of the abysses into which she penetrates, in the effort--the unsuccessful effort--to house and contain the eternal thought, we may measure the greatness of the divine mind.
She had taken him for granted, she thought with surprise and shame, watching the flickering candlelight. She had assumed his kindness was so natural and so innate, she had never asked herself whether it cost him any effort. Any effort to stand between Will and the world, protecting each of them from the other. Any effort to accept the loss of his family with equanimity. Any effort to remain cheerful and calm in the face of his own dying.
I would rather be what God chose to make me than the most glorious creature that I could think of; for to have been thought about, born in God's thought, and then made by God, is the dearest, grandest and most precious thing in all thinking.
Eleanor had never thought about killing herself – ever – but she thought a lot about stopping. Just running until she couldn’t run anymore. Jumping from something so high that she’d never hit the bottom.
You're gutless. It's how you were made. And that's not such a bad thing because your saving grace is that you've never lied to yourself about it. Not about that. Nothing wrong with cowardice as long as it comes with prudence. But when a coward stops remembering who he is... God help him.
There isn't any (afterlife), you dingbat! This is it, baby! Enjoy, carefully! Religion is such a medieval idea. Don't get me started. I have thought about every facet of religion and I can't buy any of it. So God made man in His own image? It's just the other way around. Man made God in his own image. It's all about money.
Buddhism suggests there are no elect. Everything rests upon your own self-effort, which is the good news because that means you don't have to wait around for some nebulous God to help you.
Beware of manufacturing a God of your own: a God who is all mercy, but not just; a God who is all love, but not holy; a God who as a heaven for every body, but a hell for none; a God who can allow good and bad to be side by side in time, but will make no distinction between good and broad in eternity. Such a God is an idol of your own, as truly an idol as any snake or crocodile in an Egyptian temple. The hands of your own fancy and sentimentality have made him. He is not the God of the Bible, and beside the God of the Bible there is no God at all.
God would love to piece together the shattered fragments of your life. But He is waiting ... graciously waiting until the time is right. Until you are tired of the life you are living ... until you see it for what it really is. Until you are weary of coping ... of taking charge of your own life ... until you realize the mess you are making of it. Until you recognize your need for Him ... He's waiting.
Let us learn this lesson from Nehemiah: you never lighten the load unless first you have felt the pressure in your own soul. You are never used of God to bring blessing until God has opened your eyes and made you see things as they are.
I thought that what I felt for you was right," Luce said. "I loved you until it hurt me, until our love was consumed by your pride and rage. The thing you called love made me disappear. So I had to stop loving." She Paused. "Our adoration never diminished the Throne, but your love diminished me. I never meant to hurt you. I only meant to stop you from hurting me.
Every single success you experience is a combination of two things: your effort and Allah's help. When you don't put in enough effort, Allah does not give His barakah. And sometimes you might put in a lot of effort but you may not see the result you expected. That, also, is Allah's barakah.
Anytime someone says your God is ugly and you release your God and join their God, there is no hope for your freedom until you once more believe in your own concept of the 'deity.'
Let God fling you out (as seed), and do not go until He does. If you select your own spot, you will prove an empty pod. If God sows you, you will bring forth fruit.
If you are vigilant and make a stern effort to reject every thought when it rises, you will soon find that you are going deeper and deeper into your own inner self, where there is no need for your effort to reject the thoughts.
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