FINDING PEACE ON THE JOURNEY

[My friend Marge had an experience] aboard a plane bound for Cleveland, waiting for takeoff. As she settled into her seat, Marge noticed a strange phenomenon. On one side of the airplane a sunset suffused the entire sky with glorious color. But out of the window next to her seat, all Marge could see was a sky dark and threatening, with no sign of the sunset.

As the plane's engines began to roar, a gentle Voice spoke within her.

You have noticed the windows, He murmured beneath the roar and thrust of the takeoff. Your life, too, will contain some happy, beautiful times, but also some dark shadows. Here's a lesson I want to teach you to save you much heartache and allow you to "abide in Me" with continual peace and joy.

You see, it doesn't matter which window you look through; this plane is still going to Cleveland. So it is in your life. You have a choice. You can dwell on the gloomy picture. Or you can focus on the bright things and leave the dark, ominous situations to Me. I alone can handle them anyway.

And the final destination is not influenced by what you see or feel along the way.

Learn this, act on it and you will be released, able to experience the "peace that passes understanding."

-Catherine Marshall in

Touching the Heart of God

SACRIFICIAL LIVING'S PAYOFF

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-Edmund P. Clowney in

Tabletalk (March 1995)

SOME THINGS CAN'T BE MEASURED

The modern myth of power has gravely impoverished our civilization. It has deprived it of all values that lie beyond the search for power. The beautiful, the good, the true cannot be weighed and measured. True knowledge is spiritual knowledge, which is beyond the reach of the world of quantity and therefore is disregarded by our civilization.

-Paul Tournier in

The Whole ...