"Do you know what that sound is, Highness? Those are the shrieking eels. If you don't believe me, just wait! They always grow louder when they're about to feed on human flesh."

"When you get into a tight place and everything goes against you till it seems as though you could not hold on a minute longer, never give up then for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn." --Harriet Beecher Stowe

"Rodents Of Unusual Size? I don't think they exist."

"It came to pass...that the brook dried up." (1 Kings 17:7.)

The education of our faith is incomplete if we have not learned that there is a providence of loss, a ministry of failing and of fading things, a gift of emptiness. The material insecurities of life make for its spiritual establishment. The dwindling stream by which Elijah sat and mused is a true picture of the life of each of us. "It came to pass...that the brook dried up"--that is the history of our yesterday, and a prophecy of our morrows.

In some way or other we will have to learn the difference between trusting in the gift and trusting in the Giver. The gift may be good for a while, but the Giver is the Eternal Love.

Cherith was a difficult problem to Elijah until he got to Zarephath, and then it was all as clear as daylight. God's hard words are never his last words. The woe and the waste and the tears of life belong to the interlude and not to the finale.

Had Elijah been led straight to Zarephath he would have missed something that helped to make him a wiser prophet and a better man. He lived by faith at Cherith. And whensoever in your life and mine some spring of earthly and outward resource has dried up, it has been that we might learn that our hope and help are in God who made Heaven and earth. --F. B. Meyer.

Perchance thou, too, hast camped by such sweet waters,
And quenched with joy thy weary, parched soul's thirst;
To find, as time goes on, the streamlet alters
     From what it was at first.

Hearts that have cheered, or soothed, or blest, or strengthened;
Loves that have lavished so unstintedly;
Joys, treasured joys--have passed, as time hath lengthened, 
     Into obscurity.

If thus, ah soul, the brook thy heart hath cherished
Doth fail thee now--no more thy thirst assuage--
If its once glad refreshing streams have perished, 
     Let HIM thy heart engage.

He will not fail, nor mock, nor disappoint thee;
His consolations change not with the years;
With oil of joy He surely will anoint thee,
And wipe away thy tears. 

--J. Danson Smith 

"It's not that bad. Well, I'm not saying I'd like to build a summer home here, but the trees are actually quite lovely."

"When Paul was in prison he wrote a very happy letter to the Christians in Philippi. He used the word joy over and over. How did he manage to find joy in such a dark place? Was he some sort of plaster saint, immune to human misery? He was not. He found joy, I believe, because he was always looking for it. Many people are always looking for misery, and it is not hard to find. When they've found it, they tell everybody about it--much more about it than anybody wants to know. Others are continually looking for joy. This is not the same thing as pursuing happiness, which depends on happenings. Joy depends on Christ living in us, and being allowed to make us joyful. This can happen in the worst of earthly circumstances. From prison Paul wrote, 'I wish you joy in the Lord! I will say it again: all joy be yours' (Phil. 4:4). Look for joy in God and you'll find it."

--from The Music of His Promises, by Elisabeth Elliot

"As you wish."

"So the Lord blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning." (Job 42:12.)

Through his griefs Job came to his heritage. He was tried that his godliness might be confirmed. Are not my troubles intended to deepen my character and to robe me in graces I had little of before? I come to my glory through eclipses, tears, death. My ripest fruit grows against the roughest wall. Job's afflictions left him with higher conceptions of God and lowlier thoughts of himself. "Now," he cried, "mine eye seeth thee."

And if, through pain and loss, I feel God so near in His majesty that I bend low before Him and pray, "Thy will be done," I gain very much. God gave Job glimpses of the future glory. In those wearisome days and nights, he penetrated within the veil, and could say, "I know that my Redeemer liveth." Surely the latter end of Job was more blessed than the beginning.

--from In the Hour of Silence

"Good night Westley. Good work. Sleep well. I'll most likely kill you in the morning."

May You Have

Enough happiness
     to keep you sweet,
Enough trials
     to keep you strong,
Enough sorrow
     to keep you human,
Enough hope
     to keep you happy,
Enough failure
     to keep you humble,
Enough success
     to keep you eager,
Enough friends
     to give you comfort,
Enough wealth
     to meet your needs,
Enough enthusiasm
     to look forward,
Enough faith
     to banish depression,
Enough determination
     to make each day better than yesterday.

-Published by Pocket Cross, Inc., Houston, PA 15342

"We'll never succeed. We may as well die here." "No, no. We have already succeeded."

Adam Palmer is a good writer; but even a good writer feels like a failure sometimes.

Here is an excerpt from one of his blog posts:


"So, the year 2011 has come and gone, and my experiment with writing a complete novel on Twitter--a book called Space Available, FYI--is now finished. Here's what I learned:

It's okay to succeed only halfway.

This is the biggest lesson I learned, and it was also the hardest one. With about four or five months left in the year, I started to realize that, unless I really kicked on the afterburners, I was not going to finish strong. And that's when the whole project began to feel like a giant weight on my shoulders. I was already battling depression (it's a thing I deal with), and the added stress of feeling like a massive failure was almost debilitating.

Fortunately, with about six weeks left in the year, I had a good chat with Jeff Gerke, the publisher at Marcher Lord Press about the state of the book and where it could be. I also had a good chat with my wife, who helped me to realize something that I have a hard time owning up to:

Admitting my limitations is not the same thing as admitting defeat.

And one other thing:

Admitting defeat is okay, too.

And when it came to Space Available, I felt defeated. I had gone into it with such high hopes, and it wasn't turning out at all like I'd thought it would. It was way too short, it was scattershot, it was far afield thematically from what I'd set out to do, and it generally felt like a big, giant misfire.

But I was learning to be okay with that. These things happen (even the usually smart Apple released the Mac Cube). I was willing to admit that Space Available had, in a lot of ways, become a misfire, but that was okay. And even if it wasn't where I'd originally wanted it to be, I could give it the ending it deserved, bring some closure, and even leave the door open for a sequel, should the desire arise (though not written through Twitter). In the end, my novel turned into a novella that will be published as an e-book, and I learned a good lesson about biting off more than I could chew and that sometimes cutting bait was preferable to fishing when you're in over your head (and perhaps I could've learned more lessons about mixing metaphors).

All in all, I've come away from the experience a wiser writer and a better person, and that's really all I could hope for. We'll see what the future holds."


To read the entire blog post, visit: http://adampalmerauthor.blogspot.com/2012/01/space-available-post-mortem.html

To read Space Available, visit: http://www.scribd.com/doc/69536113/Space-Available-Compiled