Two lives, two goals Nearly 200 years ago there were two Scottish brothers named John and David Livingstone. John had set his mind on making money and becoming wealthy, and he did. But under his name in an old edition of the “Encyclopaedia Britannica” John Livingstone is listed simply as “the brother of David Livingstone.”
And who was David Livingstone? While John had dedicated himself to making money, David had knelt and prayed. Surrendering himself to Christ, he resolved, “I will place no value on anything I have or possess unless it is in relationship to the Kingdom of God.” The inscription over his burial place in Westminster Abbey reads, “For thirty years his life was spent in an unwearied effort to evangelize.”
On his 59th birthday David Livingstone wrote, “My Jesus, my King, my Life, my All; I again dedicate my whole self to Thee.”
—Billy Graham in Breakfast with Billy Graham
Sun alone creates a desert We could never learn to be brave and patient, if there were only joy in the world.
—Helen Keller, quoted in The Miracle of Change
All is for God God has created me to do Him some definite service; He has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another. I have my mission . …
Therefore I will trust Him. Whatever, wherever I am, I can never be thrown away. If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve Him; in perplexity, my perplexity may serve Him; if I am in sorrow, my sorrow may serve Him. My sickness, or perplexity, or sorrow may be necessary causes of some great end, which is quite beyond us. He does nothing in vain.
—John Henry Newman in Prayers, Verses and Devotions
Wrong kind of repair It is much easier to fix blame than to fix problems.
—Kathleen Parker in the Orlando Sentinel
The point of asking Think of the last thing you prayed about—were you devoted to your desire or to God? Determined to get some gift of the Spirit or to get at God? “Your Father knows what you need before you ask him.” The point of asking is that you may get to know God better. “Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart.” Keep praying in order to get a perfect understanding of God Himself.
—Oswald Chambers in My Utmost for His Highest
Life’s real miracles Do not pray for easy lives; pray to be stronger people. Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers; pray for powers equal to your tasks. Then the doing of your work shall be no miracle, but you shall be a miracle.
—Phillips Brooks in Quotes & Idea Starters
Patches of Godlight We—or at least I—shall not be able to adore God on the highest occasions if we have learned no habit of doing so on the lowest. At best, our faith and reason will tell us that He is adorable, but we shall not have found Him so, not have “tasted and seen.” Any patch of sunlight in a wood will show you something about the sun which you could never get from reading books on astronomy. These pure and spontaneous pleasures are “patches of Godlight” in the woods of our experience.
—C. S. Lewis in Letters to Malcolm
Tribulation’s lessons As soon as we know our dependence, our own nothingness, we begin, by dying, to live. In this is our only hope: that knowing our nothingness, we come to learn from tribulation—and then tribulation, instead of paralyzing us and beating us to death and despair, is the necessary condition for us to learn how to live and tribulation teaches us the truth: it teaches us that our philosophy in which everything is centered on ourselves is false and deadly, because evil, in it, is inexplicable, and increases more and more as we try to avoid it more and more.
—Thomas Merton in Run to the Mountain
Misstep It is a small step from looking down on others to looking up to oneself.
—P. J. O’Rourke in The Weekly Standard (Nov. 25, 1996)
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