Being and Doing – 1 November – Doubts

I THINK that to assure everyone, and especially those we most love, that He is love, and that they are simply to repose in that thought without troubling themselves about their belief or realization of it or anything else, is our great business.   God is seeking us, and not we Him;  and it is an infinite comfort to know this when we are fevered and restless with the thought of our own impotent struggles and great laziness.   ‘In quietness and confidence is our strength,’ but not in thinking of quietness and confidence, or grieving that we have so little of either, but in simply assuring ourselves of the ground that we have to believe that God is our friend now and ever, and that He can be nothing else, and that the forgetfulness of this and nothing else has been our sin and shame

F. D. MAURICE

TO KNOW that God does not depend upon our feelings, but our feelings upon God, to know that we must claim a certain spiritual position as our right before we can realise it in our apprehensions, to be assured that we have the spirit of God within us, and that He is distinct from all the emotions, energies, affections, sympathies, in our minds, the only Source and Inspirer of them all, this is most necessary for us, the peculiar necessity, if I am not mistaken, of this age.

F. D. MAURICE

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These quotes are from ‘Being and Doing’ A selection of helpful thoughts from various authors arranged for daily reading.

Collected by Constance M Whishaw and first published in 1908 for members of the Being and Doing Guild whose object is to do all they can for the relief of suffering and misery.

Most of the writers are 19th Century Christians from Britain and Europe who were committed to living their faith through deeds as well as words – Being AND Doing.

For many years these words have kept me company and encouraged me on the journey of faith.  I hope they will encourage others also.