He does not ask everyone to give all they have. But if He does, are we willing? Truly willing? . . . Whatever He asks of us, whether it be a fortune or a pittance or our time or our devotion, we can be sure it will be painful. Cutting out what stands between us and God always is. But we can also trust that in the giving, we'll gain something far more precious.

Love really was like a bird. You didn’t know where it might settle, or where. You couldn’t tame it, couldn’t force it. Couldn’t often predict it. You could call and call for it and never would it flutter down. Then, at the most unexpected time, in the most unexpected place, it was there.

When we stay, it’s because the islands know our names, and they whisper them to us on the wind.

Perhaps you weren’t perfectly adapted to the environs into which you were born, Libby. But that doesn’t mean He made a mistake in where He put you. It means only that He set you on a journey, like any other migratory creature who needs different settings for different seasons. He led you here.

He had nothing to gain here but Libby herself. And everything—absolutely everything to lose.

In her mind, God had always been distant, abstract. But now, here, with these people, she couldn’t help but think that He’d come near. Or that she had.

Perhaps she was only spending a summer here, but all the same she relished the idea that she could belong. By virtue of simply knowing and being known. Of loving it.

Sometimes the Lord answered prayers at an alarming rate.

...Then he touched his lips to to hers. Just a touch. But it lit a spark. Then a fire, a sweeping, a diving. She clung to his shoulders and parted her lips and was lost. Utterly, beautifully lost...