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.”