If you entered the workshop of a blacksmith, you would not dare to find fault with his bellows, anvils and hammers. If you had not the skill of a workman, but the consideration of a man, what would you say? "It is not without cause the bellows are placed there; the artificer knew, though I do not know, the reason." You would not dare to find fault with the blacksmith in his shop, and do you dare to find fault with God in His world?
St. Bernard.
We thank Thee, O loving Father, that we are not alone in the universe with longing for the higher life. There are a thousand revelations of Thee in our fellowmen. And when we cannot find Thee, for blindness, in nature or in ourselves, we can see Thee revealed in the lives heroic that surround us. In the abstract Thou art hard to find; in the lives of men Thou art always visible. We thank Thee that there is a contagion of rightness and that love is a vital seed that fills the world with its kind. We are fearful of love sometimes, fearing to waste it on a loveless world. Help us to see that every atom we give becomes an ocean to ourselves. Amen.
September 24
To be at all—what is better than that?
I think if there were nothing more developed, the clam in its callous shell in the sand were august enough
I am not in any callous shell;
I am cased with supple conductors, all over
They take every object by the hand, and lead it within me;
They are thousands, each one with his entry to himself;
They are always watching with their little eyes, from my head to my feet;
One no more than a point lets in and out of me such bliss and magnitude,
I think I could lift the girder of the house away if it lay between me and whatever I wanted.
Walt Whitman.
Our Heavenly Father, we thank Thee for all the delicate beauty as well as for the rugged strength of these bodies in which Thou hast set us to live. But more wonderful than the habitation of the soul is the soul itself. Thou hast made us a little lower than the angels, Thou hast crowned us with glory and honor, and we join reverently in the words of the great poet-prophet who said of man—"In action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a God!" O Lord, we thank Thee for this great thought of our own life. Yet let us not be vain nor proud. We pray rather that we may be inspired to live so earnestly and so nobly that we shall prove our title now to all that we have dreamed as our natural birthright. So shall we feel ourselves to-day sons and daughters of God. Amen.
September 25