“Many talk much, and indeed well, of what Christ has done for us: but how little is spoken of what he is to do in us! and yet all that he has done for us is in reference to what he is to do in us.” - Adam Clarke-
“This perfection is the restoration of man to the state of holiness from which he fell, by creating him anew in Christ Jesus, and restoring to him that image and likeness of God which he has lost.” -Adam Clarke-
“I am only one; but still I am one. I cannot do everything; but still I can do something.
And because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.”– E.E. Hale
“Happiness is letting go of what you think your life is supposed to look like and celebrating it for everything that it is.”-- Mandy Hale
“It is not the going out of port, but the coming in, that determines the success of a voyage.” - Henry Ward Beecher-
. Through the vulgar error of undervaluing what is common, we are apt indeed to pass these by as of little worth. But as in the outward creation. so in the soul, the common is the most precious. Science and art may invent splendid modes of illuminating the apartments of the opulent; but these are all poor and worthless compared with the common light which the sun sends into all our windows, which he pours freely, impartially over hill and valley, which kindles daily the eastern and western sky; and so the common lights of reason, and conscience, and love, are of more worth and dignity than the rare endowments which give celebrity to a few.
William Ellery Channing
“Stop apologizing. You don’t have to say sorry for how you laugh, how you dress, how you speak. You don’t have to be sorry for being yourself. Do it fearlessly. It’s time to accept this is you and you gotta spend the rest of your life with you. So, start loving your sarcasm, your awkwardness, your unique sense of humor, your everything. It will make your life so much easier to simply be yourself.”
– Author Unknown
It is chiefly through books that we enjoy intercourse with superior minds, and these invaluable means of communication are in the reach of all. In the best books great men talk to us, give us their most precious thoughts, and pour their souls into ours. God be thanked for books. They are the voices of the distant and the dead, and make us heirs of the spiritual life of past ages. Books are the true levelers. They give to all who will faithfully use them the society, the spiritual presence, of the best and greatest of our race. No matter how poor I am. No matter though the prosperous of my own time will not enter my obscure dwelling. If the Sacred Writers will enter and take up their abode under my roof; if Milton will cross my threshold to sing to me of Paradise, and Shakspeare to open to me the workings of imagination and the workings of the human heart, and Franklin to enrich me with his practical wisdom, I shall not pine for want of intellectual companionship, and I may become a cultivated man though excluded from what is called the best society in the place where I live.
Wm.Ellery Channing
" When I was from ten to fourteen years of age, I attended prayer meetings…I would return to my home and with the utmost sincerity ask God to take me out of the world if He would only save me from hell. I professed to love God, Said I hoped I loved Him as I heard my elders do… my love must have been similar to the love a woman would feel to a tyrant who with a loaded pistol pointed at her heart bade her love him or die. I grew to know that true love cannot be forced. We cannot love the unlovely. “We love Him because He first loved us.” -P.T. Barnum-
“The idea behind a kaleidoscope is that it’s a structure that’s filled with broken bits and pieces, and somehow if you can look through them, you still see something beautiful. And I feel like we are all that way a little bit.”-- Sara Bareilles
“Little self-denials, little honesties, little passing words of sympathy, little nameless acts of kindness, little silent victories over favorite temptations-these are the silent threads of gold which, when woven together, gleam out so brightly in the pattern of life that God approves.” -Frederic Farrar-
“Our destiny is not determined by the number of times we stumble but by the number of times we rise up, dust ourselves off, and move forward.” -Dieter F. Uchtdorf-
Do you continue to go with Jesus?
“You are they which have continued with Me in My temptations.” Luke 22:28.
It is true that Jesus Christ is with us in our temptations, but are we going with Him in His temptations? Many of us cease to go with Jesus from the moment we have an experience of what He can do. Watch when God shifts your circumstances, and see whether you are going with Jesus, or siding with the world, the flesh and the devil. We wear His badge, but are we going with Him? “From that time many of His disciples went back and walked no more with Him.” The temptations of Jesus continued throughout His earthly life, and they will continue throughout the life of the Son of God in us. Are we going with Jesus in the life we are living now?
We have the idea that we ought to shield ourselves from some of the things God brings round us. Never! God engineers circumstances, and whatever they may be like we have to see that we face them while abiding continually with Him in His temptations. They are His temptations, not temptations to us, but temptations to the life of the Son of God in us. The honour of Jesus Christ is at stake in your bodily life. Are you remaining loyal to the Son of God in the things which beset His life in you?
Do you continue to go with Jesus? The way lies through Gethsemane, through the city gate, outside the camp; the way lies alone, and the way lies until there is no trace of a footstep left, only the voice, “Follow Me.”
-Oswald Chambers-
“We should be lifting each other up and cheering one another on. Not trying to outshine, or one up each other. The sky would be awfully dark with only one star.”
– Author Unknown
Rely on yourself for your well-being as far as possible. Don’t look to others. You have no right to happiness and others have no obligation to provide it for you. Your right is to the pursuit of happiness. Learn to cultivate the soil of solitude. Happy solitude is the sole beatitude. O beata solitudo, sola beatitudo. An exaggeration to be sure, but justifed by the truth it contains. In the end, the individual is responsible for his happiness.
-Bill Vallicella
“Believing in the resurrection does not just mean assenting to a dogma and noting a historical fact. It means participating in this creative act of God’s … Resurrection is not a consoling opium, soothing us with the promise of a better world in the hereafter. It is the energy for a rebirth of this life. The hope doesn’t point to another world. It is focused on the redemption of this one.” -Jürgen Moltmann-
“God weeps with us so that we may one day laugh with him.” -Jürgen Moltmann-
“Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck.”-- Dalai Lama
“God’s wrath, then,is hardly distinguishable from His Love: both are creative… God is against evil wherever it exists, evil which encrusts itself upon seemingly righteous people in subtle ways. But it is consumable, and must be consumed, that the essential nature of man, the image of God, may appear. When man is fully purged, then he will be a son of God in truth.”
Rolland Hein, in his book “The Harmony Within: the spiritual vision of George MacDonald”.
Emotion is energy in motion. Every thought that pops up from the depths of the subconscious or from the surface conscious mind creates its emotions and directly impacts our feelings and experiences. Emotions unbridled could land anyone into miseries and regrets. Positive emotions of passionate commitment to success in life or self realisation can be transforming. But negative emotions like anger and jealousy, greed and over possessiveness create unhappiness in life. In order to put the reins to this powerful energy, the practice of mindfulness and meditation is a must. Let go of all expectations and come, visit your inner shrine, feel the music of silence and allow the energy in motion to take you to your own inner Abode of Peace!
Love the journey!
~~Shuddhaanandaa Brahmachari
“That is why faith, wherever it develops into hope, causes not rest but unrest, not patience but impatience. It does not calm the unquiet heart, but is itself this unquiet heart in man. Those who hope in Christ can no longer put up with reality as it is, but begin to suffer under it, to contradict it. Peace with God means conflict with the world, for the goad of the promised future stabs inexorably into the flesh of every unfulfilled present.” -Jürgen Moltmann-
“There are two days in a persons life, the day we are born and the day we know why.” -Dr. Wm. Barclay
