6 Quotes by Amy Alznauer

One thing that does seem clear to me is that love comes before reformation. Loving God awakens in us a desire to love what is good. This is not external change, an artificial grasping after some sort of holiness we cannot see or understand; it is not self-flagellation but an internal change that happens slowly. The mechanism of change is love, not shame.

We are so dependent on one another for faith. We hold faith communally, but there is no such thing as faith held communally but by no one in particular. There is nothing that completely transcends the individual. It is true that this or that person may waver from time to time. But at all times there must be someone holding it up.

I didn't even try to drum up the doubts so that I could reason past them; I just knew that I should marry him and discover the reasons later.

Lately, I've been trying to think of spiritual truths more like the laws of physics than like human laws. If we are selfish, it is not that God will punish us or that we would be just fine if God eased up the rules a bit. It's that being selfish chips away at our happiness the way a river washes away rock.

The church is a community of doubters struggling to believe, relying on one another to make it real.

I would not take back her life. Even if someone told me that I could go back and erase her, do it a different way so that some other child would live and I would never have to bear the loss of Clare, I would not accept the offer.