THE Lord knows how to make stepping-stones for us of our defects, even; it is what He lets them be for. He remembereth—He remembered in the making—that we are but dust; the dust of earth, that He chose to make something little lower than the angels out of.
A. D. T. WHITNEY.
December 20
Take no thought how or what ye shall speak: for it shall be given you in that same hour what ye shall speak.—MATT. x. 19.
Just to follow hour by hour
As He leadeth;
Just to draw the moment's power
As it needeth.
F. R. HAVERGAL.
You have a disagreeable duty to do at twelve o'clock. Do not blacken nine, and ten, and eleven, and all between, with the color of twelve. Do the work of each, and reap your reward in peace. So when the dreaded moment in the future becomes the present, you shall meet it walking in the light, and that light will overcome its darkness. The best preparation is the present well seen to, the last duty done. For this will keep the eye so clear and the body so full of light that the right action will be perceived at once, the right words will rush from the heart to the lips, and the man, full of the Spirit of God because he cares for nothing but the will of God, will trample on the evil thing in love, and be sent, it may be, in a chariot of fire to the presence of his Father, or stand unmoved amid the cruel mockings of the men he loves.
G. MACDONALD.
December 21
Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? He giveth power to the faint; and to them that have no might he increaseth strength.—ISA. xl. 28, 29.