What grieves me is that I am constantly forgetting to recognize God’s hand in the little, everyday trials of life, and instead of receiving them as from Him, find fault with the instruments by which He sends them.

And as to carrying religion into everything, how can one help it if one’s religion is a vital part of one’s self, not a cloak put on to go to church in and hang up out of the way against next Sunday?

We only know ourselves and what we really are when the force of circumstances brings us out.

During my long illness and confinement to my room, the Bible has been almost a new book to me; and I see that God has always dealt with His children as He deals with them now and that no new thing has befallen me. All these weary days so full of languor, these nights so full of unrest have had their appointed mission to my soul. And perhaps I have had no discipline so salutary as this forced inaction and uselessness at a time when youth and natural energy continually cried out for room and work.

I want to see little children adorning every home, as flowers adorn every meadow and every way-side. I want to see them welcomed to the homes they enter, to see their parents grow less and less selfish and more and more loving, because they have come. I want to see God’s precious gifts accepted, not frowned upon and refused.

Consenting to suffer does not annul the suffering.

Go home and say to yourself, ‘I am a wayward, foolish child. But He loves me! I have disobeyed and grieved Him ten thousand times. But He loves me! I have lost faith in some of my dearest friends and am very desolate. But He loves me! I do not love Him, I am even angry with Him! But He loves me!

You cannot prove to yourself that you love God by examining your feelings toward Him. They are indefinite and they fluctuate. But just as far as you obey Him, just so far, depend upon it; you love Him. It is not natural to us sinful, ungrateful beings to prefer His pleasure to our own or to follow His way instead of our own way, and nothing, nothing but love of Him can or does make us obedient to Him.