Sarah Arthur Quotes

“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

“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

“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

“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

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

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

“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

“You are small. Your foe is big. But your God is bigger still.”

— 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

“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

“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

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

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

“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

“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

“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

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