January 11

“How can you live sweetly amid the vexatious things, the irritating things, the multitude of little worries and frets, which lie all along your way, and which you cannot evade? You cannot at present change your surroundings. Whatever kind of life you are to live must be lived amid precisely the experiences in which you are now moving. Here you must win your victories or suffer your defeats. No restlessness or discontent can change your lot. Others may have other circumstances surrounding them, but here are yours. You had better make up your mind to accept what you cannot alter. You can live a beautiful life in the midst of your present circumstances.”

J. R. MILLER

“Thou cam’st not to thy place by accident,
It is the very place God made for thee,
And should’st thou there small scope for action see,
Do not for this give room to discontent
Nor let the time thou owest to God be spent
In idly dreaming how thou mightest be,
In what concerns thy spiritual life, more free
From outward hindrance or impediment,
For presently, this hindrance thou shalt find
That, without which all goodness were a task
So slight that virtue never could grow strong;
And would’st thou do one duty to His mind –
The Imposer’s – over-burdened thou shalt ask
And own thy need of grace or help ere long.”

January 10

“Our present circumstances are to be looked upon as advantages which the Great Disposer has afforded us, and not, as we are apt to think, impediments which He has thrown in our way. They are the materials with which we are to begin to build, and not a heap of rubbish that must be cleared out of the way before we lay the first stone in the edifice of our lives.”

HERRON

“Never fancy you could be something if only you had a different lot and sphere assigned to you. The very things that you most deprecate, as fatal limitations or obstructions, are probably what you most want. What you call hindrances, obstacles, discouragements, are probably God’s opportunities.”

“Despise not thou small things,
The soul that longs for wings
To soar to some great height of sacrifice too oft
Forgets the daily round,
Where little cares abound,
And shakes off little duties while she looks aloft.”

January 9

“There is so much to be set right in the world, there are so many to be led and helped and comforted, that we must continually come in contact with such in our daily life. Let us only take care that we do not miss our turn of service, and pass by those to whom we might have been sent on an errand straight from God.”

“The common problem, yours, mine, every one’s,
Is not to fancy what were fair in life
Provided it could be – but finding first
What may be, then find how to make it fair
Up to our means – a very different thing.”

R. BROWNING

“Instead of saying that man is the creature of circumstance, it would be nearer the mark to say that man is the architect of circumstance. It is character which builds an existence out of circumstance. From the same material one man builds palaces, another hovels, one warehouses, another villas. Bricks and mortar are mortar and bricks until the architect can make them something else.”