God's Shelter Quotes & Sayings

I saw the destruction of Dresden. I saw the city before and then came out of an air-raid shelter and saw it afterward, and certainly one response was laughter. God knows, that's the soul seeking some relief. — Kurt Vonnegut

Whereas my joy lies in being close to God. I have taken shelter in the Lord, continually to proclaim what you have done. (Ps. 73:28) — Anonymous

Clouds there are none, and clear stars beam mild, God, in His mercy, protection is showing, Comfort and hope to the poor orphan child. Ev'n should I fall o'er the broken bridge passing, Or stray in the marshes, by false lights beguiled, Still will my Father, with promise and blessing, Take to His bosom the poor orphan child. There is a thought that for strength should avail me, Though both of shelter and kindred despoiled; Heaven is a home, and a rest will not fail me; — Charlotte Bronte

Like the apple of Thine eye preserve me, O Lord God; defend me and beneath Thy wings shelter me from temptations. — Ephrem The Syrian

I was not sure where I was going, and I could not see what I would do when I got [there]. But you saw further and clearer than I, and you opened the seas before my ship, whose track led me across the waters to a place I had never dreamed of, and which you were even then preparing to be my rescue and my shelter and my home. — Thomas Merton

I began to suspect that perhaps the problem lies not in God's goodness but in how we measure it. Laxmi and Kanakaraju and the women and children at the AIDS ministry, they prayed for basic things - food, shelter, health, peace - and they did not always receive. Yet I saw in their eyes the kind of joy and spiritual connectedness that most Christians I know long for. — Rachel Held Evans

When God sends no answer and "the cloud remain[s]," we must wait. Yet we can do so with the full assurance of God's provision of manna, water from the rock, shelter, and protection from our enemies. He never keeps us at our post without assuring us of His presence or sending us daily supplies. — Lettie B. Cowman

Owners of dogs will have noticed that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they will think you are god. Whereas owners of cats are compelled to realize that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they draw the conclusion that they are gods. — Christopher Hitchens

What he'd seen before, in those ages-ago times, the days before the people had been taught by the gods how to draw the metals from the ground and cut and grind the stone to shelter themselves, was contained in the goat god's nearly perpetual Mona Lisa smile. — Toneye Eyenot

The problem of why God created the universe still troubles thinking men; but if we cannot know why, we can at least know that He did not bring His worlds into being to meet some unfulfilled need in Himself, as a man might build a house to shelter him against the winter cold or plant a field of corn to provide him with necessary food. The word 'necessary' is wholly foreign to God. — Aiden Wilson Tozer

1Whoever dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty.[241] 2I will say of the LORD, "He is my refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust." 3Surely he will save you from the fowler's snare and from the deadly pestilence. 4He will cover you with his feathers, and under his wings you will find refuge; his faithfulness will be your shield and rampart. — Anonymous

And Julius Caesar could be a statesman in one moment and a butcher in the next, and Ecuadorian paper money could be traded for food, shelter, and clothing in one moment and line the bottom of a birdcage in the next, and the universe could be created by God Almighty in one moment and by a big explosion in the next - and on and on. Thanks to their decreased brainpower, people aren't diverted from the main business of life by the hobgoblins of opinions anymore. — Kurt Vonnegut

Did you never run for shelter in a storm, and find fruit which you expected not? Did you never go to God for safeguard, driven by outward storms, and there find unexpected fruit? — John Owen

You have the habit of walking slowly holding grudges and resentments. Ill-tempered and greedy, small-minded, and with so many attachments how do you expect to attain union? Leave this muddy water and seek clarity. Being so weak, you need all the help and the grace of God to overcome the waves and reach the shore to safety. Take shelter with those who need no shelter. Only on the horse of love can you go beyond the sun and moon to behold the Perfect One. — Rumi

The deepest need of men is not food and clothing and shelter, important as they are. It is God. — Thomas R. Kelly

I wondered what exactly the war had accomplished. Men had fought great battles: the Battle of the Bulge, the battle for Monte Casino, the battle for the beaches, for God and country, for God and freedom, for God and a pure race. They had left hundreds of cities in ruins and their people without shelter or food. — Miriam Darvas

God Almighty is my sacred shelter. — Lailah Gifty Akita

DAILY WE HAVE TO DO SOMETHING ASSISTENCE TO WORLD NEEDY BY MONEY DONATION AND PROVIDING FOOD,CLOTHES AND SHELTER. AS A HUMAN AND TAKE SOUL BLESSINGS FROM ALL OF THEM AFTER THEIR MENTAL PLEASING SATISFACTION.GOD WILL PROVIDE A LOT MORE THAN OUR WANTS AND REQUIRES AS WE DREAM AND DESIRED TILL ALL OUR LIFE TENURE END WITHOUT ANY HINDRENCES.GOD BLESS YOU ALL MY GLOBAL CITIZENS — Various

A baby almost killed me as I walked to work one morning. By passing beneath a bus shelter's roof at the ordained moment I lived to tell my tale. With strangers surrounding me I looked at what remained. Laoughter from heaven made us lift our eyes skyward. The baby's mother lowered her arms and leaned out her window. Without applause her audience drifted off, seeking crumbs in the gutters of this city of God. Xerox shingles covered the shelter's remaining glass pane, and the largest read:
Want to be crucified. Have own nails.
Leave message on machine.
The fringe of numbers along the ad's hem had been stripped away. My shoes crunched glass underfoot; my skirt clung to my legs as I continued down the street. November dawn's seventy-degree bath made my hair lose its set. Mother above appeared ready to take her own bow; I too, as ever, flew on alone. — Jack Womack

Before God does anything, before he makes anything for us to be sustained by, God says, More than food, more than water, more than shelter, more than other people, they are going to need me. — Wesley Miller

Our God, our help in ages past,Our hope for years to come,Our shelter from the stormy blast,And our eternal home. — Isaac Watts

If they drive God from the earth, we shall shelter Him underground.
The Brothers Karamazov
Mitya (Dmitri) to Aloysha who visits him in prison, Book XI - Ivan, Chapter 4 - A Hymn and a Secret. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Yet already their destruction begins. It comes upon them gradually, in little ways. Bit by bit their belief in themselves erodes. A growing cynicism pervades their lives. Small acts of kindness and charity are abandoned as pointless and somehow indicative of weakness. Little failures of behavior lead to bigger ones. It is not enough to ignore the discourtesies of others; discourtesies must be repaid in kind. Men are intolerant and judgmental. They are without grace. If one man proclaims that God has spoken to him, another quickly proclaims that his God is false. If the homeless cannot find shelter, then surely they are to blame for their condition. If the poor do not have jobs, then surely it is because they will not work. If sickness strikes down those whose lifestyle differs from our own, then surely they have brought it on themselves. — Terry Brooks

Material possessions in themselves are good. We would not survive for long without money, clothing, shelter and food. Yet if we refuse to share what we have with the hungry and the poor, we make of our possessions a false god. How many voices in our materialist society tell us that happiness is to be found by acquiring as many possessions and luxuries as we can! But this is to make possessions into a false god. Instead of bringing life, they bring death. — Pope Benedict XVI

If they drive God from earth, we shall shelter him underground - Dmitri Karamazov — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

(T)he true enemy of humanity was not Evil, an abstract idea personified by some sort of crimson-faced creature dancing in flames, but Chance, that smoky million-handed monster forever fitting its tiny fingers into the fissures of your life, working tear it apart, loosening the fatal screw, turning that first cell cancerous, sending lightning to strike the tree that you chose for shelter from the storm. The version of Satan that embodied every ill of human life had been patched onto the Judeo-Christian tradition because the early God that Moses knew was too tough and terrible for worshippers to want to deal with. The fear that Moses had of Yahweh was as much of His caprice as of His power
He was just as likely to force the Hebrews to wander in the wilderness as He was to rescue them from the Egyptians. In short, He was not the embodiment of good, but of chance: neither good nor evil, but inscrutable and unavoidable. — Dexter Palmer

Don't let a stranger that comes to you leave empty handed without food, water, shelter, or word of encouragement. Whether you believe in God or s**t, it's a bad omen when you let a stranger that came to you left empty handed. — Uzoma Nnadi

Someone once said give a dog food and shelter and treats and they think you are a god, but give a cat the same and they think they are the god. — Steven Rowley

My people? Who are they?
I went into the church where the congregation
Worshiped my God. Were they my people?
I felt no kinship to them as they knelt there.
My people! Where are they?
I went into the land where I was born,
Where men spoke my language.
I was a stranger there.
"My people," my soul cried. "Who are my people?"
Last night in the rain I met an old man
Who spoke a language I do not speak,
Which marked him as one who does not know my God.
With apologetic smile he offered me
The shelter of his patched umbrella.
I met his eyes ... And then I knew ... — Rosa Zagnoni Marinoni

Do not lose your inner peace for anything whatsoever, not even if your whole world seems upset. If you find that you have wandered away from the shelter of God, lead your heart back to Him quietly and simply. — Francis De Sales

It is the heaven-born instinct of a gracious soul to seek shelter from all ills beneath the wings of Jehovah. A hypocrite, when afflicted by God, resents the infliction, and, like a slave, would run from the Master who has scourged him — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

To become a monk, or a nun, or to join a House of of Mercy, is not the high road to sanctification. True holiness does not make a Christian evade difficulties, but face and overcome them. Christ would have His people show that His grace is not a mere hot-house plant, which can only thrive under shelter, but a strong, hardy thing which can flourish in every relation of life. It is doing our duty in that state to which God has called us
like salt in the midst of corruption, and light in the midst of darkness
which is a primary element in sanctification. — J.C. Ryle

My meaning, is, that churchmen in peace and quiet pray to Heaven for the welfare of the world, but we soldiers and knights carry into effect what they pray for, defending it with the might of our arms and the edge of our swords, not under shelter but in the open air, a target for the intolerable rays of the sun in summer and the piercing frosts of winter. Thus are we God's ministers on earth and the arms by which his justice is done therein. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

May God provide food, clothing and shelter for all humankind. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Mere opinions, in fact, were as likely to govern people's actions as hard evidence, and were subject to sudden reversals as hard evidence could never be. So the Galapagos Islands could be hell in one moment and heaven in the next, and Julius Caesar could be a statesman in one moment and a butcher in the next, and Ecuadorian paper money could be traded for food, shelter, and clothing in one moment and line the bottom of a birdcage in the next, and the universe could be created by God Almighty in one moment and by a big explosion in the next
and on and on. — Kurt Vonnegut

God presents the Sabbath rest as a shelter we can enter. (Hebrews 4:1-11) — Charles R. Swindoll

When we try to focus our thought upon One who is pure uncreated being we may see nothing at all, for He dwelleth in light that no man can approach unto. Only by faith and love are we able to glimpse Him as He passes by our shelter in the cleft of the rock. — A.W. Tozer

A cold and searching wind drives away all contagion, and nothing can withstand it but what has a virtue in it, and accordingly, whatever we meet with in cold and bleak places, as the tops of mountains, we respect for a sort of sturdy innocence, a Puritan toughness. All things beside seem to be called in for shelter, and what stays out must be part of the original frame of the universe, and of such valor as God himself. — Henry David Thoreau

If we stay with animal analogies for a moment, owners of dogs will have noticed that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they will think you are god. Whereas owners of cats are compelled to realize that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they draw the conclusion that they are god. (Cats may sometimes share the cold entrails of a kill with you, but this is just what a god might do if he was in a good mood.) — Christopher Hitchens

PRECIOUS FATHER, you are the almighty Lord of the universe, and yet you are my friend. May I not grieve your Spirit but rather return the love that you have given me without reservation. I give you my heart, Lord. Thank you for walking with me during difficult times. I rejoice in the peace and shelter of your love that comes only from knowing you. IT IS BUT RIGHT THAT OUR HEARTS SHOULD BE ON GOD, WHEN THE HEART OF GOD IS SO MUCH ON US. Richard Baxter (1615-1691) — Cheri Fuller

The magnanimous know very well that they who give time, or money, or shelter, to the stranger
so it be done for love, and not forostentation
do, as it were, put God under obligation to them, so perfect are the compensations of the universe. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Everyone - all of us, every last person on God's earth - deserves decent shelter. It speaks to the most basic of human needs - our home - the soil from which all of us, every last person, either blossom or wither. We each have need of food, clothing, education, medical care, and companionship; but first, we must have a place to live and grow. — Millard Fuller

To speak of Jesus's divinity without speaking of his kingdom coming on earth as in heaven is to take a large step toward the detached spirituality - almost a form of Gnosticism - that the first two centuries of the church firmly rejected. Only recently did the awful realization dawn on me that a certain stance was not only possible, but actually occurring: people were affirming the divinity of Jesus - which I also fully and gladly affirm - and then using it as a shelter behind which to hide from the radical story the gospels were telling about what this embodied God was actually up to. — N. T. Wright

In the beginning there was Isis: Oldest of the Old, She was the Goddess from whom all Becoming Arose. She was the Great Lady, Mistress of the two Lands of Egypt, Mistress of Shelter, Mistress of Heaven, Mistress of the House of Life, Mistress of the word of God. She was the Unique. In all Her great and wonderful works She was a wiser magician and more excellent than any other God. — Merlin Stone

I sleep equally well in a soft bed or on the grass beside the road. If I am given food and shelter, fine. If not, I'm just as happy. Many times I am given shelter by total strangers. When hospitality is not available there are always bus depots, railroad stations and all night truck stops ... When no shelter is available to me, I sleep in the fields or by the side of the road with God to guard me. — Peace Pilgrim

I have only one prayer to offer to God, and it is that when I have been driven out of every society He will give me shelter at His own feet. — Rabindranath Tagore

There can be no more reliable authority on earth than God's Word, the Bible. This timeless, trustworthy source of truth holds the key that unlocks life's mysteries. It alone provides us with the shelter we need in times of storm. — Charles R. Swindoll

God will not take shelter behind a jugglery of logic or metaphysics. He is neither a schoolman nor theologian, but our Father in Heaven. — George MacDonald

Lord I thank you blessing me with food, clothing and shelter. — Lailah Gifty Akita

To look is important. We look to immediate things and out of immediate necessities to the future, coloured by the past. Our seeing is very limited and our eyes are accustomed to near things.
Our look is as bound by time-space as our brain. We never look, we never see beyond this limitation; we do not know how to look through and beyond these fragmentary frontiers. But the eyes have to see beyond them, penetrating deeply and widely, without choosing, without shelter; they have to wander beyond man-made frontiers of ideas and values and to feel beyond love. Then there is a benediction which no god can give. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

If God resides anywhere ... surely he shelters behind barricades of pure chance. — Simon Mawer

If we are haunted by God, nothing else can get in, no cares, no tribulation, no anxieties. We see now why Our Lord so emphasised the sin of worry. How can we dare be so utterly unbelieving when God is round about us? To be haunted by God is to have an effective barricade against all the onslaughts of the enemy. "His soul shall dwell at ease." In tribulation, misunderstanding, slander, in the midst of all these things, if our life is hid with Christ in God, He will keep us at ease. We rob ourselves of the marvellous revelation of this abiding companionship of God. "God is our Refuge" - nothing can come through that shelter. — Oswald Chambers

Even there, in the mines, underground, I may find a human heart in another convict and murderer by my side, and I may make friends with him, for even there one may live and love and suffer. One may thaw and revive a frozen heart in that convict, one may wait upon him for years, and at last bring up from the dark depths a lofty soul, a feeling, suffering creature; one may bring forth an angel, create a hero! There are so many of them, hundreds of them, and we are all to blame for them. [ ... ] If they drive God from the earth, we shall shelter Him underground. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Flute Notes from a Reedy Pond
Now coldness comes sifting down, layer after layer,
To our bower at the lily root.
Overhead the old umbrellas of summer Wither like pithless hands.
There is little shelter.
Hourly the eye of the sky enlarges its blank
Dominion. The stars are no nearer. Already frog-mouth and fish-mouth drink The liquor of indolence, and all thing sink Into a soft caul of forgetfulness. The fugitive colors die. Caddis worms drowse in their silk cases,
The lamp-headed nymphs are nodding to sleep like statues.
Puppets, loosed from the strings of the puppetmaster
Wear masks of horn to bed. This is not death, it is something safer. The wingy myths won't tug at us anymore: The molts are tongueless that sang from above the water Of golgotha at the tip of a reed,
And how a god flimsy as a baby's finger
Shall unhusk himself and steer into the air. — Sylvia Plath

91 He who dwells in a the shelter of the Most High will abide in b the shadow of the Almighty. 2 I will say [1] to the LORD, "My c refuge and my d fortress, my God, in whom I e trust." 3 For he will deliver you from f the snare of the fowler and from the deadly pestilence. 4 He will g cover you with his pinions, and under his h wings you will i find refuge; his j faithfulness is k a shield and buckler. 5 l You will not fear m the terror of the night, nor the arrow that flies by day, 6 nor the pestilence that stalks in darkness, nor the destruction that wastes at noonday. 7 A thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand, but it will not come near you. 8 You will only look with your eyes and n see the recompense of the wicked. 9 Because you have made the LORD your o dwelling place - the Most High, who is my c refuge — Anonymous

God has identified himself with the hungry, the sick, the naked, the homeless; hunger not only for bread, but for love, for care, to be somebody to someone; nakedness, not for clothing only, but nakedness of that compassion that very few people give to the unknown; homelessness, not only just for a shelter made from stone but for that homelessness that comes from having no one to call your own. — Mother Teresa

That little bird has chosen his shelter. Above it are the stars and the deep heaven of worlds. Yet he is rocking himself to sleep without caring for tomorrow's lodging, calmly clinging to his little twig, and leaving God to think for him. — Martin Luther

The weathermen warn us for days of the impending snowstorm that's to arrive Thursday night. The grocery stores have run out of bottle water as people prepare to take shelter in their homes; my God, I think, it's winter, an annual certainty, not the atomic bomb. — Mary Kubica

If you stumble over mere believability, what are you living for? Love is hard to believe, ask any lover. Life is hard to believe, ask any scientist. God is hard to believe, ask any believer. What is your problem with hard to believe? Reason is excellent for getting food, clothing and shelter. Reason is the very best tool kit. Nothing beats reason for keeping tigers away. But be excessively reasonable and you risk throwing out the universe with the bathwater — Yann Martel

If sometimes our poor people have had to die of starvation, it is not that God didn't care for them, but because you and I didn't give, were not an instrument of love in the hands of God, to give them that bread, to give them that clothing; because we did not recognize him, when once more Christ came in distressing disguise, in the hungry man, in the lonely man, in the homeless child, and seeking for shelter. — Mother Teresa

She was like defenceless Nature, that withers in the blast because it has shelter neither of God nor of men; human beings do not give one another shelter; and God? We shall see, when in the end we are dead of consumption. Perhaps the Almighty had made a note of all that she had had to suffer. All the same she felt that evening that she was not too old once more to view the future in a dream; in a new dream. To be able to look forward is to live. — Halldor Laxness

God's Name can not be heard without response, nor said without an echo in the mind that calls you to remember. Say His Name, and you invite the angels to surround the ground on which you stand, and sing to you as they spread out their wings to keep you safe, and shelter you from every worldly thought that would intrude upon your holiness. — Foundation For Inner Peace

We need not join the mad rush to purchase an earthly fallout shelter. God is our eternal fallout shelter. From Strength to Love, 1963 — Martin Luther King Jr.

The LORD GOD is a shelter from the heat.
The LORD GOD is a refuge from the storm. — Lailah Gifty Akita

The building is rather like a medieval Castle and was established in the Sixth Century and soon afterwards, as the Moslem armies advanced Westwards from the Arabian Peninsula, somebody had the prescience to build a small Mosque in its courtyard to guard against it being burned or demolished. At the time of the Crusades it was the turn of the Monastery to protect the Mosque, and so it has been down the ages, each House of God extending its shelter to the other as opposing armies came and went. — Ahdaf Soueif

People care about what your business can do for them. How will it help them? What's in it for them? Will it solve their problem? Make their life easier? Provide them with shelter? Save them money? Educate them? Make them feel something? Tell me, why on God's green Earth should I give your business money? What value are you adding to my life? — M.J. DeMarco

To feed the hungry, clothe the naked and shelter the harborless without also trying to change the social order so that people can feed, clothe and shelter themselves is just to apply palliatives. It is to show a lack of faith in one's fellows, their responsibilitie s as children of God, heirs of heaven. — Dorothy Day

Five truly effective prescriptions to remedy a bad day.
(You can't overdose.)
- Pray; discuss your troubles with God.
- List your blessings. (The blue sky, soft cookies, warm socks, etc.)
- Call your mom.
- Visit an animal shelter and hug a lonely cat.
- Visit a nursing home and hug a lonely grandparent. — Richelle E. Goodrich

If you have men who will exclude any of God's creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who will deal likewise with their fellow men. — Francis Of Assisi

In a storm there is no shelter like the wings of God. — Thomas Brooks

Sometimes the best way to bring good news to the poor is to bring actual good news to the poor. It appears a good way to bring relief to the oppressed is to bring real relief to the oppressed. It's almost like Jesus meant what He said. When you're desperate, usually the best news you can receive is food, water, shelter. These provisions communicate God's presence infinitely more than a tract or Christian performance in the local park. They convey, "God loves you so dearly, He sent people to your rescue. — Jen Hatmaker

The family should be a closely knit group. The home should be a self-contained shelter of security; a kind of school where life's basic lessons are taught; and a kind of church where God is honored; a place where wholesome recreation and simple pleasures are enjoyed. — Billy Graham

As a system of philosophy it is not like the Tower of Babel, so daring its high aim as to seek a shelter against God's anger; but it is like a pyramid poised on its apex. — Adam Sedgwick

God has and always will remain faithful to His word. Even when my doubts and fears threaten to drown me as I thrash blindly against my Rescuer, He carries me to the other side. When fiery circumstances take my breath away, He hides me in the shelter of His wings. — Katherine J. Walden

When God made up this world of ours, He made it long and wide, And meant that it should shelter all, And none should be denied. — Carrie Jacobs-Bond

Kuwait is the origin which our roots extend in it's base. The fort that we seek for shelter and stick to after God Almighty. Kuwait is the entity that maintains our presence that's united in it's features and divisions. — Jaber Al-Ahmad Al-Sabah

Every lord's mansion stands on the foundation of your bones, soldier, every field has been saturated with your sweat, and you, peasant, even if you worked your arms down to the stub, if you won a hundred battles, and faithfully gave the last drop of your blood for your country, you would always be a slave. There is no land for you, no heaven, no shelter, not even a doghouse where you could rest your poor head. You are the last before God and before people, the last one. — Wladyslaw Stanislaw Reymont

On Earth one of the things that a large proportion of the locals is most proud of is this wonderful economic system which, with a sureness and certainty so comprehensive one could almost imagine the process bears some relation to their limited and limiting notions of either thermodynamics or God, all food, comfort, energy, shelter, space, fuel and sustenance gravitates naturally and easily away from those who need it most and towards those who need it least. Indeed, those on the receiving end of such largesse are often harmed unto death by its arrival, though the effects may take years and generations to manifest themselves. — Iain M. Banks

In his invitation to The road-weary spiritual seekers, Jesus offered to be to them what God was to the nation of Israel while they wandered in the desert. He promised to those who followed him that he would be their shelter, defender, leader, and provider. — Will Davis Jr.

Psalm 91
My Refuge and My Fortress
91:1 He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the Almighty.
2 I will say to the Lord, My refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust. — LaNina King

If you were an atheist, Birbal," the Emperor challenged his first minister, "what would you say to the true believers of all the great religions of the world?" Birbal was a devout Brahmin from Trivikrampur, but he answered unhesitatingly, "I would say to them that in my opinion they were all atheists as well; I merely believe in one god less than each of them." "How so?" the Emperor asked. "All true believers have good reasons for disbelieving in every god except their own," said Birbal. "And so it is they who, between them, give me all the reasons for believing in none."
From "The Shelter of the World — Salman Rushdie

The peace and safety for which you yearn is not a
matter of food, clothing, and shelter. It is a matter of
love. Love and be loved, and all else will be added
unto you. The world will perform its magic when you step into
yours. That is the promise of God, and it will be kept. — Neale Donald Walsch

God's visit to earth took place in an animal shelter with no attendants present and nowhere to lay the newborn king but a feed trough ... For just an instant the sky grew luminous with angels, yet who saw the spectacle? Illiterate hirelings who watched the flocks of others, "nobodies" who failed to leave their names ... — Philip Yancey

That there was no God was a given, as far as Hope was concerned, and being nice to people and making the most of your life struck her as a reasonable enough conclusion to draw from it, and in any case what she wanted to do. But besides the spires of theology and the watch-towers of ideology, it seemed a very shaky hut indeed, and not one that offered her much shelter or would stand up in court.
She couldn't see a way to make her objection to the fix a deduction from any body of thought. It came from a body of flesh, her own, and that was enough for her. She doubted that this would be enough for anyone else. — Ken MacLeod

What we would like to do is change the world
make it a little simpler for people to feed, clothe, and shelter themselves as God intended them to do. And, by fighting for better conditions, by crying out unceasingly for the rights of the workers, the poor, of the destitute
the rights of the worthy and the unworthy poor, in other words
we can, to a certain extent, change the world; we can work for the oasis, the little cell of joy and peace in a harried world. We can throw our pebble in the pond and be confident that its ever widening circle will reach around the world. We repeat, there is nothing we can do but love, and, dear God, please enlarge our hearts to love each other, to love our neighbor, to love our enemy as our friend. — Dorothy Day