I realized that the deepest spiritual lessons are not learned by His letting us have our way in the end, but by His making us wait, bearing with us in love and patience until we are able to honestly to pray what He taught His disciples to pray: Thy will be done.
To love God is to love His will. It is to wait quietly for life to be measured by One who knows us through and through. It is to be content with His timing and His wise appointment.
Worship is not an experience. Worship is an act, and this takes discipline. We are to worship ?in spirit and in truth.? Never mind about the feelings. We are to worship in spite of them.
But the question to precede all others, which finally determines the course of our lives is What do I really want? Was it to love what God commands, in the words of the collect, and to desire what He promises? Did I want what I wanted, or did I want what He wanted, no matter what it might cost?
The way you keep your house, the way you organize your time, the care you take in your personal appearance, the things you spend your money on, all speak loudly about what you believe. The beauty of thy peace shines forth in an ordered life. A disordered life speaks loudly of disorder in the soul.
Experience had quickly taught her that she could not survive the storms without the anchor of the constraining love of Christ and what she called the “Rock-counsciousness” of the promise given her, “He goeth before.
We are not asked to SEE,” said Amy. “Why need we when we KNOW?” We know – not the answer to the inevitable Why, but the incontestable fact that it is for the best. “It is an irreparable loss, but is it faith at all if it is ‘hard to trust’ when things are entirely bewildering?
To be a follower of the Crucified means, sooner or later, a personal encounter with the cross. And the cross always entails loss. The great symbol of Christianity means sacrifice and no one who calls himself a Christian can evade this stark fact.
Eve’s daughters are as flowers and none can ever say they are through unfolding. And what man can predict the consummate end of such a life when its ultimate center is Sharon’s Rose?
A quiet heart is content with what God gives. It is enough. All is grace.
God never witholds from His child that which His love and wisdom call good. God’s refusals are always merciful – “severe mercies” at times but mercies all the same. God never denies us our hearts desire except to give us something better.
Today is mine. Tomorrow is none of my business. If I peer anxiously into the fog of the future I will strain my spiritual eyes so that I will not see clearly what is required of me now!