June 6

God’s choice brings rest

“Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising, thou understandest my thought afar off” (Psa. 139:2).
“But as for you, ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good” (Gen. 50:20).

Never complain of your birth, your training, your employment, your hardships; never fancy that you could be something, if only you had a different lot and sphere assigned you. God understands His own plan, and He knows what you want a great deal better than you do. The very things that you most deprecate as fatal limitations or obstructions, are probably what you most want. What you call hindrances, obstacles, discouragements, are probably God’s opportunities; and it is nothing new that the patient should dislike his medicines, or any certain proofs that they are poisons.


No! a truce to all such impatience! Choke that envy which gnaws at your heart because you are not in the same lot with others. Bring down your soul, or rather, bring it up to receive God’s will, and do His work, in your lot, in your sphere, under your cloud of obscurity, against your temptations; and then you shall find that your condition is never opposed to your good, but really consistent with it.
—Horace Bushnell.

There is a jewel which no Indian mine can buy,
No chemic art can counterfeit;
It makes men rich in greatest poverty,
Makes water wine, turns wooden cups to gold,
The homely whistle to sweet music’s strain;
That much in little—all in nought—Content.
—H. W. Longfellow.

Read full article...