The Quotable Susan

Quotes from my friend Susan and other equally “famous” people.

Quotes about God

“It is not the level of spirituality that you can depend on, it is God and nothing less than God. For the work is God’s, and the call is God’s, and everything is summoned by Him and to His purposes; the whole scene, the whole mess, the whole package –our bravery, our cowardice, our strengths, and our weaknesses. The God who could take a murderer like Moses, an adulterer like David, and a traitor like Peter and make of them strong servants of His is a God who can redeem savage Indians using as the instruments of His peace a conglomeration of sinners who sometimes look like heroes and sometimes look like villains.”

-Elizabeth Elliott from her book “Through Gates of Splendor”


“I know I cannot trust in anything other than God…certainly not in not dying which is not guaranteed. Safety is not the basis of trust. Instead, our faith needs to be in God, inexplicable God, dangerous God, other than ourselves God, who does not order this world according to our will but knows more than we do and loves more deeply.”

-Dr. Jennifer Myhre (missionary to Uganda during the 2007 Ebola outbreak)


Susan’s response when I told her that I felt as if I was pestering God over and over with the same requests; “I know, I do it too. I say, ‘Ok God, Let’s just go over this one more time; you’re God and I am not. You can do something about my concerns and I can’t. So teach me to release it to you.”

-Susan Siami (friend)

Through My Kitchen Window

My Father’s words of Wisdom

Last year at Mother’s Day and Father’s Day I wrote rather serious blogs about my parents, but this year I am choosing humor. In keeping with my Mother’s Day blog, “God’s word from my mother’s mouth”, I will share two humorous verses I learned from my father.

This first one was not his original thinking. It came from an elderly single missionary woman. Nevertheless, I wouldn't know the story had my father not told it to me. My dad told me about a missionary friend who when asked why she had never married always responded that her reasons were biblical. It comes from Romans 1: 13 in the New American Standard version where it says these words, “I would not have you – ignorant brethren…” Look it up! It really says that!

The other one is unique to my dad.

My dad had three daughters, I am the middle sister. At the breakfast table one morning my dad announced with a twinkle in his eye that he had found a Bible verse about him and his daughters. Then he opened his Bible to Proverbs 30:15 and read, “The leech has two daughters crying “Give, give!” He explained that a leech was a physician so that was him and then he read the verse again, “The leech has two daughters crying “Give, give!”

Well, my witty younger sister (the youngest of the three daughters) quickly responded with, “That verse isn’t about me! It says the leech has two daughters and it was written before I was born!”