Do those who form your household welcome your approach in the morning
As the earth welcomes the presence of dawn,
Or do they dread your coming lest you censure and complain?
Do you begin the day with praise to God for each blessing you possess, and do you speak frequent words of commendation to those about you?
Do those you claim to love often hear you talking in love’s language,
Or is your softest tone and your sweetest speech saved for the sometime guest,
While the harsh voice and the sharp retort are used with those you love the best?
You who are praying for the Christ’s return
And for the coming of the Promised Day,
How is it in the four walls of your home
The while you pray?
Are you trying to make your home a reflection of what you believe heaven will be?
Unless you are you will never find heaven anywhere;
The foundations of our heavenly mansions must first be built on earth.
Unless you are striving to put in use some of the angelic virtues here and now,
No angelhood will be accorded you hereafter.
Unless you are illustrating your desire for peace by a peaceful, love-ruled home,
You have no right to clamour for a cessation of hostilities among nations;
Nations are only chains of individuals.
When each individual expresses nothing but love and peace in his daily life, there will be no more war.
You who are loudly crying out for peace,
You who are wanting love to vanquish hate,
How is it in the four walls of your home
The while you wait?
‘LET US GIVE THANKS’
For the courage which comes when we call,
While troubles like hailstones fall;
For the help that is somehow nigh,
In the deepest night when we cry;
For the path that is certainly shown
When we pray in the dark alone,
Let us give thanks.
For the knowledge we gain if we wait
And bear all the buffets of fate;
For the vision that beautifies sight
If we look under wrong for the right;
For the gleam of the ultimate goal
That shines on each reverent soul:
Let us give thanks.
For the consciousness stirring in creeds
That love is the thing the world needs;
For the cry of the travailing earth
That is giving a new faith birth;
For the God we are learning to find
In the heart and the soul and the mind:
Let us give thanks.
For the growth of the spirit through pain,
Like a plant in the soil and the rain;
For the dropping of needless things
Which the sword of a sorrow brings;
For the meaning and purpose of life
Which dawns on us out of the strife:
Let us give thanks.