Be Anxious For Nothing
The beginning of anxiety is the end of faith, and the beginning of true faith is the end of anxiety.
—George Muller in Signs of the Times
Future planning and working
My garden has taught me to think ahead. For it to be fruitful, I must plan. I must build soil, plant, and nurture what I have planted. It has also taught me to hold the harvest lightly. Over the course of a season I can lose a crop to spring rains that rot the seed, slugs that eat new shoots, rabbits that eat everything, hail that breaks the strong, and drought that withers the weak. I can lose a crop because of my ignorance or my carelessness. Until I have the fruit in storage, where it can also spoil, I live with uncertainty. I do my best, work faithfully, and hope.
—John Leax in In Season and Out
Created to stretch
God created man something on the order of a rubber band. A rubber band is made to stretch. When it is not being stretched, it is small and relaxed, but as long as it remains in that shape, it is not doing what it was made to do. When it stretches, it is enlarged; it becomes tense and dynamic, and it does what it was made to do. God created you to stretch.
—Charles Paul Conn in Making It Happen
I can’t outrun God
I know not where His islands lift
Their fronded palms in air;
I only know I cannot drift Beyond His love and care.
—John Greenleaf Whittier in The Eternal Goodness
Heaven on Earth
We all long for heaven where God is but we have it in our power to be in heaven with Him right now—to be happy with Him at this very moment. But being happy with Him now means:
loving as He loves,
helping as He helps,
giving as He gives,
serving as He serves,
rescuing as He rescues,
being with Him for all the twenty-four hours,
touching Him in His distressing disguise.
—Mother Teresa in A Gift for God
Preparing to meet the Eternal
To follow Christ is to walk with Him first into the presence of His Father. If that is so, we had better know how to act in the divine presence now (in this present life) and then (in the life everlasting). Ultimately, we will be there a long, long time.
—Gordon MacDonald in Forging a Real-World Faith
Rx for a long life
The Bible has hundreds of helpful suggestions for long, happy and sane living. Here is one of them:
Come, listen to me, my sons,
I will teach you true religion.
’Tis your desire to live,
to live long and be happy?
Then keep your tongue from evil,
keep your lips from deceit;
shun evil and do good,
seek to be friendly—aim at that.…
[T]here you have advice that, if followed, would save one from becoming a censorious whiner. Doing friendly acts to others always develops a personality that is lovely and fragrant. If tens of thousands in our institutions today had developed such scriptural attitudes, they would not be kicking out their last tantrums in asylums and nursing homes.
—S. I. McMillen in None of These Diseases
Joy through pain
I know not how God will dispose of me. I am always happy. All the world suffers; and I, who deserve the severest discipline, feel joys so continual and so great that I can scarce contain them.
—Brother Lawrence in The Practice of the Presence of God
Seize the day
The Chinese symbols for crisis are identical to those for the word opportunity. Literally translated it reads “Crisis is an opportunity riding the dangerous wind.”
—Dennis Waitley in Seeds of Opportunity
