1
My grandmother used to tell me that every boss is temporary, that every rainy day is temporary, that every hardship is temporary. She used to tell me, "Son, every goodbye ain't gone. Just hold on -- there's joy coming in the morning." --James Melvin Washington
2
It is a fact of Christian experience that life is a series of troughs and peaks. In his efforts to get permanent possession of a soul, God relies on the troughs more than the peaks. And some of his special favorites have gone through longer and deeper troughs than anyone else. --Peter Marshall
3
Pain is pain and sorrow is sorrow. It hurts. It limits. It impoverishes. It isolates. It restrains. It works devastation deep within the personality. It circumscribes in a thousand different ways. There is nothing good about it. But the gifts God can give with it are the richest the human spirit can know. --Margaret Clarkson
4
Through our problems God can prove to the world how powerfully He provides for His people. The greater the need, the greater the testimony to God's grace, and often, by God's design, the greater the audience. --Tom Elliff
5
Measure not God's love and favor by your own feeling. The sun shines as clearly in the darkest day as it does in the brightest. The difference is not in the sun, but in some clouds. --Richard Sibbs
6
Who is it that is your Shepherd? The Lord! Oh, my friends, what a wonderful announcement! The Lord God of heaven and earth, and Almighty Creator of all things, He who holds the universe in His hand as though it were a very little thing. He is your shepherd, and has charged himself with the care and keeping of you, as a shepherd is charged with the care and keeping of his sheep. If your hearts could really take in this thought you would never have a fear or a care again; for with such a Shepherd how could it be possible for you ever to want any good thing? --Hannah Whitall Smith
7
For nourishment, comfort, exhilaration, and refreshment, no wine can rival the love of Jesus. Drink deeply. --Charles Haddon Spurgeon
8
The love of God a perfect plan
Is planning now for thee,
It holds "a future and a hope,"
Which yet thou canst not see.
--Freda Hanbury Allen
9
God has a way of loving us and blessing us that is so much better than fair. Think of the ways God has blessed us that transcend what we "deserve." Every good thing that has ever come to us is a gift of God's grace. If you and I could ever stop being self-centered long enough to be honest, we would have to say that we are not entitled to any good thing. We have no right to demand anything. And the last thing we really want is for God to just be "fair" with us. What we want and what we need is grace, the love that is better than fair. And grace is exactly what we ultimately receive from the God who is better than fair, even when life is less than fair. --Charles E. Poole, in "Is Life Fair? Good Words for Hard Times," 1996, Smyth & Helwys, Macon, Georgia
10
Every year, I might almost say every day, that I live, I seem to see more clearly how all the rest and gladness and power of our Christian life hinges on one thing; and that is, taking God at His word, believing that He really means exactly what He says, and accepting the very words in which He reveals His goodness and grace, without substituting others or altering the precise modes and tenses which He has seen fit to use. --Frances Ridley Havergal
11
If you wish to be disappointed, look to others. If you wish to be downhearted, look to yourself. If you wish to be encouraged . . . look upon Jesus Christ. --Erich Sauer
12
God will not permit any troubles to come upon us, unless He has a specific plan by which great blessing can come out of the difficulty. --Peter Marshall
13
Seeing God as parent may seem childish. But might there be, in the unadmitted sparkle of the child within you, a sometime longing to climb into God's fatherly lap, to nestle against God's motherly breast, to rest for a moment in the shadow of God's wings or be held in God's strong and tender arms? If you could allow yourself to feel it, are there not times when you would love to cry on God's shoulder, to let God tell you you are worthwhile and beautiful? And is there not something in you that would be delighted if you could bring a smile to God's face? --Gerald May
14
When you and I want direction for our lives, we may not always be clear about it or certain that the direction has been given--even when we get it. That's not always because of weak faith. That may be just our human inability to know what God knows. God sees our tomorrows; we don't. Years of experience have taught me that God will probably leave me alone if I'm on the right path, but He will give me a good shove in the right direction if I'm not. --Roger C. Palms
15
Everything that God brings into our life is directed to one purpose: that we might be conformed to the image of Christ. --Erwin W. Lutzer
16
If He stood by Paul saying, "Fear not," just as really and maybe as evidently will He stand by you. If He guided him in his work, restraining him from preaching here, and calling him to service there, He will give you also leadings just as certain and maybe as distinct. --J. Rendel Harris
17
If I ever reach heaven, I expect to find three wonders there: first, to meet
some I had not thought to see there; second, to miss some I had expected to
see there; and third, the greatest wonder of all, to find myself there.
--John Newton
18
I will not doubt, though all my ships at sea
Come drifting home with broken masts and sails;
I shall believe the hand which never fails,
From seeming evil worketh good to me.
And, though I weep because those sails are battered,
Still will I cry, while my best hopes lie shattered,
"I trust in Thee."
--Ella Wheeler Wilcox
19
The "dark night of the soul" is not something bad or destructive. On the contrary it is an experience to be welcomed as a sick person might welcome a surgery that promises health and well-being. The purpose of the darkness is not to punish or afflict us. It is to set us free. --Richard J. Foster
20
For each of us the time is surely coming when we shall have nothing but God. Health and wealth and friends and hiding places will all be swept away, and we shall have only God. To the man of pseudo faith that is a terrifying thought, but to real faith it is one of the most comforting thoughts the heart can entertain. --A. W. Tozer
21
When difficult times come -- and they will -- we can decide to become bitter, angry, and brittle. Or, we can choose to open our lives to the presence of God, whose nature it is to enlarge us and deepen us and make us better because of what we have endured. --Charles E. Poole
22
This is Christmas: not the tinsel, not the giving and receiving, not even the carols, but the humble heart that receives anew that wondrous gift, the Christ. --Frank McKibben
23
Jesus came! -- and came for me.
Simple words! And yet expressing
Depths of holy mystery,
Depths of wondrous love and blessing.
Holy Spirit, make me see
All His coming means for me;
Take the things of Christ, I pray,
Show them to my heart today.
--Frances Ridley Havergal
24
The wonder of the Incarnation can only be accepted with awe. Jesus was wholly human, and Jesus was wholly divine. This is something that has baffled philosophers and theologians for two thousand years. Like love, it cannot be explained; it can only be rejoiced in. --Madeleine L'Engle
25
The Word, John tells us, the Word became flesh and took up a temporary abode with us--the word almost means "camped" among us. We have heard the words so often that we have become anesthetized against the shock of the claim being made. This is not just another claim about an inspired prophet through whom God speaks in a uniquely eloquent way. It is not a claim about a man of unique holiness in whom it was possible to catch traces of the divine presence. The claim is much more scandalous than that. The claim that this is God, at last, face-to-face with His own. --Richard Holloway
26
The implications of the name "Immanuel" are both comforting and unsettling. Comforting, because He has come to share the danger as well as the drudgery of our everyday lives. He desires to weep with us and to wipe away our tears. And what seems most bizarre, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, longs to share in and to be the source of the laughter and the joy we all too rarely know. --Michael Card
27
Where do you begin discovering the will of God? You begin by doing what you already know to be the will of God in your present situation. So many of us live for those mountain-peak experiences, those times when the clouds part and God seems so close to us. . You discover God's will in the nitty-gritty of the valley of every single day. . Why should God show you His will for the future if you aren't doing the will of God in the present? --Ray Pritchard
28
To get the most out o[ the coming year we must put the most into it, and we put the most into it by living in a spirit of earnestness, doing with our might what our hands find to do, not trifling with the golden hours, but receiving each as a precious gift from God. Only such earnest purpose makes the day a blessing, insures progress from good to better, and causes us to live in eternity while we are in time. --James Freeman Clarke
29
How fortunate we are that before we enter the New Year we first pass through Bethlehem, hear the Christmas angels "their great glad tidings tell," and lose our old fears in renewed faith. --Gates of Beauty
30
As we grow older in life, years somehow seem to shorten and New Year's Day approaches with an ever increasing tempo. The more mature we get, the more we realize that time is only relative; how we live means more than how long we live. Haply also we do not live by years, but by days. In His wisdom God does not show us all that lies ahead. So we enter a new year to live it day by day. What is past is past. Today we start anew, and what we do today will make our life for tomorrow. Chin up, shoulders straight, eyes agleam, let us salute the New Year, and each day let us follow more faithfully, more courageously, more daringly the lead of our great Captain who bids us follow Him. --William Thomson Hanzsche
31
While bells are ringing midnight-clear
Three gifts I ask for this New Year:
Faith is the pilgrim staff I crave
To keep me strong, to keep me brave.
Hope is the candle's pinpoint star
To lead me on the path afar.
Love is the mantle I would wear--
Heart-warming garments lined with prayer.
Father God, with these priceless three
Enrich the days Thou sendest me!
--Marie Barton, "Prayer for the New Year"
