It makes us feel ashamed of ever making much of any trouble. The heavenly people don’t. Our Lord never did.

Self must die – that is the message of the sponge.

For the quiet joy of Duty, 
Praise, praise I sing,
For the commonplace and lowly, 
Set with pleasure high and holy, 
In each unromantic thing, 
Praise, praise to Thee, my King.

Even if you are ill and unable to work, you can do what God’s unnamed servants of old did:  they were chosen to give thanks to the Lord, and so are you.

Never, never did He not hear.  Never was He far away.

Do we ever ask lightly to be forgiven, forgetting the cost of that forgiveness?

God give us the soldier spirit, the spirit that thirsts to be more than conqueror.

The only thing that can hinder a life from telling for Him is the mind that puts self in the centre, and the mind that refuses suffering.

If for any good reason we cannot gather our spiritual food on some particular day, God makes it all right.  But this does not alter the ordinary rule of daily gathering our daily portion.

 I have been making a list of figs, those little things not worth caring about and yet about which we are sometimes tempted to grumble.