Sarah Arthur Quotes & Sayings

You are small. Your foe is big. But your God is bigger still. — Sarah Arthur

For the story that shapes a child's universe also shapes the child - and by the child, the man thereafter. The memory of a burning fairy tale can govern behavior as truly as remembered fire will caution against fire forever. - WALTER WANGERIN — Sarah Arthur

If only life were more on the scale of Orlando Bloom taking down the giant Oliphaunt in The Return of the King rather than the usual, tedious mall-crawl with the Abercrombie crowd! We often wish the daily grind held a greater resemblance to all those fantasy worlds we've come to love, don't we? In our more desperate moments, we're tempted to walk smack into pillars at subway stations, just to see if we end up at Platform Nine and Three-Quarters. And which of us, at some point in our not-so-distant childhood (yes, let's be honest!), hasn't pushed aside the coats in a closet, hoping to find an entrance to another world? — Sarah Arthur

But at some point it becomes obvious that, ultimately, the adventure of faith is the most sensible thing to do, and in fact the only thing worth doing. As Sam says toward the end of The Two Towers, no one remembers the tales in which the characters give up and turn back. Great and heroic deeds remain undone if no one leaps into the dark to do them. That's true when it comes to faith, too. You can't play a meaningful role in the great story by playing it safe. Once you hit the road, there is no going back to life as it was before. When Jesus asks His disciples if they will leave him to, Peter says, "Lord to whom will we go?" (verse 68). It's either walk with Jesus, unsafe as it seems sometimes, or go home. — Sarah Arthur

How do I happen to believe in God? . . . Writing novels, I got into the habit of looking for plots. After awhile, I began to suspect that my own life had a plot. And after awhile more, I began to suspect that life itself has a plot. - FREDERICK BUECHNER — Sarah Arthur

Youth in our Sunday school class can repeat almost verbatim some obscure parable we dramatized last year, and yet they forget the core doctrinal statement we taught last week. Why is this? Why does story stick with us for so long? — Sarah Arthur

Story affirms that not everything in the universe can or must be explained propositionally; the loose ends of story aren't always neatly tied together, because neither are the loose ends of our lives. "Life can bear only so much reality," says poet and pastor Calvin Miller. — Sarah Arthur

There's nothing more ridiculously juvenile than people thinking they have to be grown up and serious when it comes to living the Christian life. — Sarah Arthur

We hunger for other worlds. We long to go beyond the streets we know, beyond our familiar woods and fields, and into the land of Faerie; to Middle-earth, Narnia, or Summerland; to the kingdom east of the sun and west of the moon. This longing isn't incidental. — Sarah Arthur

When was the last time you heard a long passage from a novel read aloud during Sunday school or worship? Or how about the last time a youth pastor subverted his or her "talk" through satire or parable rather than proof texting the six main points? Yet — Sarah Arthur

Since all the world is but a story, it were well for thee to buy the more enduring story, rather than the story that is less enduring. - ATTRIBUTED TO COLUMBA OF IONA SIXTH CENTURY A — Sarah Arthur

Instinctively and empirically we know that stories have the power and the potential to capture hearts and imaginations - we're just not sure how or why this is so. — Sarah Arthur

In short, you can't have the truths without the Truth. Either Jesus is telling the truth about Himself, or He is lying about everything else too. None of this business about Jesus being merely an enlightened Buddha of sorts, offering wiser-than-average insights into how to live a healthy, balanced life. None of this quoting Jesus in order to make your own point about justice or fairness or peace on earth when you don't really believe what Jesus said about Himself. — Sarah Arthur

Even though universal metanarratives are largely absent, personal "I" narratives are everywhere. The popular imagination is saturated with self-obsessive stories in film, television, advertising, music, MySpace, and YouTube - but this is the equivalent of bingeing on junk food while dying for want of substance. — Sarah Arthur

The basic principles of logic dictate that a statement cannot be both true and false at the same time ... and that a statement must be either true or false ... Lucy is lying, or she is crazy, or she is telling the truth. She can't be some combination, and she can't be none of those things ... The laws of logic dictate that she must be one of them ... Notice how practical common sense about the suposed impossibility of other worlds doesn't come into the equation. — Sarah Arthur

Story has staying power. We remember the illustrations from Sunday's sermon for months afterward, but by coffee hour we're already struggling to recite the pastor's three main points, despite various acronyms meant to help us. — Sarah Arthur

If imagination, as we've said, is the "region of discovery," story is the wardrobe door, sending our young people "further in" and "still further in" to possibilities and ideas they've never dreamed. — Sarah Arthur

Like Gandalf, God knows the battle going on inside our hobbitlike selves, the wrestling match between the Baggins and the Took. The Baggins side of us takes our creature comforts for granted. We assume these comforts are part of the terms and conditions outlined in the job description Jesus offers when he says, "Follow me." But God never said anything about discipleship being comfortable. He's more interested in coaxing the Took side of us to the fore, the side that's willing to endure a little hardship for the sake of the final destination. When we learn to live without, we discover what we're really made of. — Sarah Arthur

The cure for competing narratives is nothing more or less than the Apostles' Creed. Yes, I'll say that again: the creed is our story, succinctly stated. — Sarah Arthur

let's get our semantics straight. Story does not equal fiction, much less "lies." It's the world we Christians inhabit as "people of the Book." We are story people. All — Sarah Arthur

And that's what we're truly longing for. On those weekends when we're suddenly gripped with the urge to watch all three extended editions of The Lord of the Rings, what we really want, deep down inside (besides therapy), is the assurance that there is a realm someplace where evil has been conquered once and for all. — Sarah Arthur

Theologian Stephen Crites says sacred stories are like dwelling places - like booths or tabernacles. We don't tell these stories as much as we inhabit them. — Sarah Arthur

While the Witch plays her pawn, the King sacrifices Himself, and to all appearances, the game is over. But the Lion has one last move ... — Sarah Arthur

writes Madeleine L'Engle, "in kairos we are completely un-self-conscious and yet paradoxically far more real than we can ever be when we are constantly checking our watches for chronological time."10 — Sarah Arthur

imagination is the image-making faculty of the intellect that helps us discover, process, and creatively express coherent meaning. — Sarah Arthur

Somehow the church has forgotten what it knew for so long: story goes beyond simply illustrating some spiritual point or other; it gives form to content; it incarnates meaning. — Sarah Arthur

Funny how it all turns to theological babble the more we try to identify just exactly what we're talking about with this whole law business. No wonder C.S. Lewis wrote a story instead! Sure, he tackled the issue of moral law in Mere Christianity too. But nothing sticks in our imaginations quite so clearly as the sight of the White Witch, her bare arms raised above her head, standing over the willing, innocent, self-sacrificing Lion on the Stone Table. — Sarah Arthur

Truth is the aim of story. And though we must take into account the human author's subjectivity and personal slant, the best authors are those who tap universal longings and make connections to our real, lived humanity. — Sarah Arthur

No man is saved by his imagination," quipped nineteenth-century Scottish preacher George Morrison. "It is a question if any man is saved without it."18 — Sarah Arthur

All fairy tales, Tolkien argued, echo the gospel of Jesus Christ in some way because the gospel is the True Story; it's the real fairy tale that crashed into the time line of history... 'The heart of Christianity is a myth which is also a fact,' Lewis wrote — Sarah Arthur

The lesson is this: When the road gets dark and all hope seems lost, there's nothing to do but keep going. We, like Bilbo, must keep up our "hobbitry in heart." Even more important, as people of faith, we recognize that we are not alone. Whatever happens from this point on, we put our trust in God. And we go on. — Sarah Arthur

Just because your faith is shaken doesn't mean the faith is shaken. The eternal truths of the Kingdom aren't altered or affected by the experience that shook your beliefs. — Sarah Arthur

C. S. Lewis said it this way: "In reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself. . . . I transcend myself; and am never more myself than when I do."12 — Sarah Arthur

It's a theme born out of the Christian faith rather than a pagan understanding of the universe. Both views agree that we human beings are small, frail, and limited in our ability to battle the forces of the world that seek to destroy us.
In response, the pagan worldview says, "We cannot win this on our strength. Therefore, let us go down fighting nobly and die well."
The Christian worldview, on the other hand, says, "We cannot win this on our own strength. Therefore, we must rely on a Power outside of ourselves to win this for us. — Sarah Arthur

The Lord is close to the brokenhearted; which means that if the rest of us want to get close to God, we seek them out-not because of what we could possible offer them, as if we're the spiritual first responders on the scene to save the day, but because we recognize how much they have to teach us about who God really is. -Quoted by Sarah Arthur, Author of The One Year Daily Grind. — Sarah Arthur

God sent His Prince, Jesus, into rebel territory to conquer evil and free us to be true citizens of the Kingdom again ... That's the essential story we find in the Bible, and it's the essential story at the heart of each of our lives. And that's what all good fantasy stories have at their core, whether or not it's a conscious theme. — Sarah Arthur

To respect someone means to treat their ideas, personal space, belongings, and needs as equal in importance to your own, while to honor someone means to treat all those things as more important than your own. — Sarah Arthur

Are we genuinely prepared to say that working in an office building or shopping in a mall is real, while reading Tolstoy is not? — Sarah Arthur