Paradoxes

“As a symbol the Lord took the vertical line and the horizontal line and combined them into a single structure with ends and a middle. The Cross, nailed together by the sinner as a sign of the redemption and borne by the Son as the price of supreme humiliation, now contains nothing but paradoxes. This explains why the last shall be first and why the more I have sinned, the more I will be forgiven; and why, when I begin to love, I realize that I have no capacity for love; and why, when I try to understand something of God, I realize clearly that I do not understand anything; and why everything is light because He appears to us precisely as dark.

Mist is often the only thing that can tell of the sun.

Every rainfall refreshes; the Lord’s rainfall, however, kindles thirst in the first place.

There is a path on which all bridges have been blown up; grace then emerges right on the brink of the abyss.

If you had never drunk, you could not give thirst a name.

Faith and suffering as a unity in God; if a person could believe like the Son, he would also receive His suffering, since He Himself unites both in Himself and is Himself this unity as Word.

You have palpably separated joy and suffering for us; for You, they flow into each other and are barely distinguishable. We could not bear this escalation, this simultaneity of being at the top and at the bottom. But instead of thanks, all You hear is our complaints about the rhythm of the alternation between the two.”

~Adrienne von Speyr