In our culture institutions rather than people are seen as vessels of God's power...

Skye Jethani. THE DIVINE COMMODITY: DISCOVERING A FAITH BEYOND CONSUMER CHRISTIANITY.

Fasting is a person's whole-body, natural response to life's sacred moments. ...[It's the] body talking what the spirit yearns, what the soul longs for, and what the mind knows to be true.

Scot McKnight. FASTING.

The kind of work God usually calls you to is the kind of work (a) that you need to do and (b) that the world needs to have done. If you find your work rewarding, you have presumably met requirement (a), but if your work does not benefit others, the chances are you have missed requirement (b). On the other hand, if your work does benefit others, you have probably met requirement (b), but if most of the time you are unhappy with it, the chances are you have not only bypassed (a) but probably aren’t helping your customers much either.
....Neither the hair shirt nor the soft berth will do. The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet.

Frederick Buechner. WISHFUL THINKING: A SEEKER'S ABC

We all want progress. But progress means getting nearer to the place where you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turning, then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; and in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man.

C.S. Lewis. MERE CHRISTIANITY.

And if He had no hamartia [character flaw] in the literal sense, there was at any rate that clash between His enviornment and Himself which is the mainspring of drama. He suffered misfortune because He was what He was and could not be otherwise; and since His time tragedy has become the tragedy of will and character, and not of an external and arbitrary destiny.
Thus far, then, a classic tragedy. But…there occurs a peripeteia [reversal of circumstances]…brought about by an anagnorisis [discovery, recognition]. The Hero is recognised for what He is: and immediately, what was the blackest human tragedy turns into Divine Comedy.
In light of this fact, the interesting question arises whether such a thing as a Christian tragedy is possible….Short of damnation, it seems, there can be no Chrisitan tragedy…where Christ is, cheerfulness will keep breaking in.

Dorothy Sayers. THE MAN BORN TO BE KING. Introduction