Here is a selection of quotes from a variety of books I am reading:

“Only those who fill their hearts and minds with heaven can want or even recognize its earthly counterpart. Only they can seek after it in a way that indulges neither utopian dreams nor despotic solutions. To be of real earthly good requires a certain fearlessness: a freedom from the fear of death, from the loss of property or status or title or comfort, from the threat of tyrants, the power of armies, the day of trouble.” (Buchanan, Things Unseen)

“Why won’t we be bored in heaven? Because it’s the one place where both impulses—to go beyond, to go home—are perfectly joined and totally satisfied. It’s the one place where we’re constantly discovering—where everything is always fresh and the possessing of a thing is as good as the pursuing of it—and yet where we are fully at home—where everything is as it ought to be and where we find, undiminished, that mysterious something we never found down here. All that has held us back here on earth—the weariness, the fear, the dullness, the brevity, the poverty—vanishes. And this lifelong melancholy that hangs on us, this wishing we were someone else somewhere else, vanishes too. Our craving to go beyond is always and fully realized. Our yearning for home is once and for all fulfilled. The ahh! of deep satisfaction and the aha! of delighted surprise meet, and they kiss.” (Buchanan, Things Unseen)

“Perseverance is not something that is merely handed down to us, but it is something that comes to realization only in the path of faith.” (G. C. Berkouwer, from Wellum and Parker, Progressive Covenantalism)

“The explanation did not seem to explain.” (The Hobbit) (I feel like I am left with this same feeling regularly while talking with our children!)