No Melody
One frequently meets passersby with music emanating from transistor radios on their persons. Lacking music in our hearts, we carry it in our pockets!
—Vance Havner inThe Vance Havner Quote Book
Be Patient
Jesus went to Jerusalem one Passover holiday and met a man who had waited thirty-eight years at the Bethesda pool for a healing. Tradition had it that every so often an angel of the Lord would stir the waters and whoever stepped in first would be cured. For thirty-eight years, this man had reached out for a healing only to be muscled aside by someone bigger and faster.
Some folks say this man didn’t want to be healed, or else he would have pushed other folks aside and hustled into that pool himself. I say true patience is so scarce, we’re apt to confuse it with apathy. There’s a load of difference between the two. Apathy curls up into self-pity when times get hard. Patience quietly waits its turn, trusting that God will get around to making things right in his perfect time.
—Philip Gulley inHome Town Tales
Vain Search
Those who seek happiness too intensely will have little of it.
—Calvin Miller inThe Taste of Joy
The Sin of Self
Christians do not see themselves as wicked; they do not see their righteousness as filthy rags; they do not see themselves as needing to be in a state of ongoing confession and repentance. The result is that the body of Christ is, in large part, suffering from the power-draining effect of a universally unconfessed sin … the vanity of self-righteousness!
—Jim Russell inAwakening the Giant
It Starts with One
But where was I to start? The world is so vast, I shall start with the country I know best, my own. But my country is so very large. I had better start with my town. But my town, too, is large. I had best start with my street. No: my home. No: my family. Never mind, I shall start with myself.
—Elie Wiesel inSouls on Fire
Forget the Past
It is a mistake to be always turning back to recover the past. The law for Christian living is not backward, but forward; not for experiences that lie behind, but for doing the will of God, which is always ahead and beckoning us to follow. Leave the things that are behind, and reach forward to those that are before, for on each new height to which we attain, there are the appropriate joys that befit the new experience. Don’t fret because life’s joys are fled. There are more in front. Look up, press forward, the best is yet to be!
—F. B. Meyer inOur Daily Walk
“Junk Food”
Today we often tend to treat the Lord Jesus something like a convenience food—handy to have around in case of unexpected need.
—Margaret Clarkson inAll Nature Sings
Father of Evil
It is so stupid of modern civilization to have given up believing in the devil when he is the only explanation of it.
—Ronald Knox inLet Dons Delight
Where God Lives
Who has not found the heaven below Will fail of it above. God’s residence is next to mine, His furniture is love.
—Emily Dickinson inPoems
Time’s Value
Time is what we want most, but what, alas, we use worst, and for which God will surely most strictly reckon with us when time shall be no more.
—William Penn inFruits of Solitude
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