Katie Davis quotes:

Adoption is a beautiful picture of redemption. It is the Gospel in my living room.

The truth is that the 143 million orphaned children and the 11 million who starve to death or die from preventable diseases and the 8.5 million who work as child slaves, prostitutes, or under other horrific conditions and the 2.3 million who live with HIV add up to 164.8 million needy children. And though at first glance that looks like a big number, 2.1 billion people on this earth proclaim to be Christians. The truth is that if only 8 percent of the Christians would care for one more child, there would not be any statistics left.

I believe there is only one truly courageous thing we can do with our lives: to love unconditionally. Absolutely, with all of ourselves, so much that it hurts and then more.

Adoption is wonderful and beautiful and the greatest blessing I have ever experienced. Adoption is also difficult and painful. Adoption is a beautiful picture of redemption.

People tell me I am brave. People tell me I am strong. People tell me good job. Well here is the truth of it. I am really not that brave, I am not really that strong, and I am not doing anything spectacular. I am just doing what God called me to do as a follower of Him. Feed His sheep, do unto the least of His people.

I can't see the end of the road, but here is the great part: Courage is not about knowing the path. It is about taking the first step.

Thankfully, God's plans do not seem to be affected much by my own.

Courage isn't about knowing the path, it's about taking the first step.

Adoption is a redemptive response to tragedy that happens in this broken world.

God doesn't tell us to care for the less fortunate, He demands it.

Jesus wrecked my life, shattered it to pieces, and put it back together more beautifully.

Thankfully, God's plans also happen to be much better than my own.

When I imagine God creating each one of us and planting a purpose deep in our hearts, I never imagine that purpose being mediocrity.

Awakening is waking up from the daytime dream and realizing that who you thought you were is not limited to thought, emotion or form. Beyond the imaginary seeker, beyond concepts and beliefs, there is a field of innocence and purity. We are this deep peace and sacredness, which is absolute and beyond all intellectual understanding. I invite you to recognize this Essence of Being and to directly realize the illusion of all psychological suffering due to misidentification, misperception of separation and attachment to conditioned thought.

Being a Christ follower means being acquainted with sorrow. We must know sorrow to be able to fully appreciate joy. Joy costs pain, but the pain is worth it. After all, the murder had to take place before the resurrection.

But I am living in the midst of the uncertainty and risk, amid things that can and do bring physical destruction, because I am running from things that can destroy my soul: complacency, comfort, and ignorance. I am much more terrified of living a comfortable life in a self-serving society and failing to follow Jesus than I am of any illness or tragedy.

Do not forget in the darkness what you have been promised in the light.

Every day I have spent in Uganda has been beautifully overwhelming; everywhere I have looked, raw, filthy, human need and brokenness have been on display, begging for someone to meet them, fix them. And even though I realize I cannot always mend or meet, I can enter in. I can enter into someone's pain and sit with them and know. This is Jesus. Not that He apologizes for the hard and the hurt, but that he enters in, He comes with us to the hard places. And so I continue to enter.

God reminded me how beautiful we all are to Him, after all, we were created in His own image, and He looks at me, at you, in all our sweat and dirt and brokenness, and says, "I choose you. You are beautiful.

I don't always know where this life is going. i can't see the end of the road, but here is the great part: courage is not about knowing the path. It is about taking the first step.

I have learned to accept it, even ask for it, this 'more than I can handle.' Because in these times, God shows Himself victorious. He reminds me that all of this life requires more of Him and less of me. God does give us more than we can handle. Not maliciously, but intentionally, in love, that His glory may be displayed, that we may have no doubt of who is in control, that people may see His grace and faithfulness shining through our lives.

I will not change the world. Jesus will do that. I can, however, let Him use me to change the world for one person.

Jesus called His followers to be a lot of things, but I have yet to find where He warned us to be safe.

My heart lives in so many places. With so many people. But God whispers to me that I really have only one home, and that is with Him. I will never be content on this earth. I will always be a nomad. It was meant to be that way. My heart was created with a desire for a home, a nest, a sanctuary, and that can be found only with Him in Heaven.

People from my first home say I'm brave. They tell me I'm strong. They pat me on the back and say, 'Way to go. Good job.' But the truth is, I am not really very brave; I am not really very strong; and I am not doing anything spectacular. I am simply doing what God has called me to do as a person who follows Him. He said to feed His sheep and He said to care for 'the least of these,' so that's what I'm doing, with the help of a lot people who make it possible and in the company of those who make my life worth living

Poverty is not a sin; it is a condition, a circumstance that allows God's work to be displayed.

The fact that I loved Jesus was beginning to interfere with the plans I once had for my life and certainly with the plans others had for me. My heart had been apprehended by a great love, a love that compelled me to live differently.

We are not called to be safe, we are simply promised that when we are in danger, God is right there with us. And there is no better place to be than in His hands.

We aren't really called to save the world-not even to save one person; Jesus does that. We are just called to love with abandon. We are called to enter into our neighbors' sufferings and love them right there.

I have learned that I will not change the world, Jesus will do that. I can however, change the world for one person. I can change the world for fourteen little girls and for four hundred schoolchildren and for a sick and dying grandmother and for a malnourished, neglected, abused five-year old. And if one persons sees the love of Christ in me, it is worth every minute. In fact, it is worth spending my life for.

I am more more terrified of living a comfortable life in a self-serving society and failing to follow Jesus than I am of any illness or tragedy.