To Thee, O Author of our lives, we speak thanksgiving and gratitude for Thy gifts of love and trust. Help us to bring them into full exercise this day. By them may we know the experience of burdens made light and yokes made easy. With them, let us realize that we are effective workers with Thee. Because of them, show us how all our tasks are transformed to divine endeavors. Through them, set free all other of our highest impulses. So, O God, shall we know the fulness of life, we and all our loved ones. So shall we see doubt change to faith and blindness to vision. So shall our influence through word and work be the ministry of hope and of joy to any disconsolate, and to any who are a weak guide to the source of strength. For newness of life, for all the fruits of the spirit, whereby the heart is ever young and in joyous companionship with the Christ, for all this we pray now and ever. Amen.
November 26
The child frightened in his play runs to seek his mother. She takes him upon her lap and presses his head to her bosom; and with tenderest words of love, she looks down upon him and smooths his hair and kisses his cheek, and wipes away his tears. Then, in a low and gentle voice, she sings some sweet descant, some lullaby of love; and the fear fades out from his face, and a smile of satisfaction plays over it, and at length his eyes close, and he sleeps in the deep depths and delights of peace. God Almighty is the mother and the soul is the tired child; and He folds it in His arms and dispels its fears, and lulls it to repose, saying "Sleep, my darling, sleep! It is I who watch thee."
Henry Ward Beecher.
Blessed Master! we thank Thee that every tired and weary child may find rest in the bosom of the Father. Each morning brings with it new cares, new duties, new privileges, new responsibilities; for all these, we need Thy protecting care, and pray for Thy divine guidance. When wearied and burdened with the cares of daily life, wilt Thou help us to flee to Thee as the frightened child flees to the loving mother; and wilt Thou encircle us with Thine arms of love, and whisper in our ears words of comfort and cheer and of forgiveness. Teach us to trust Thee in the morning, to walk with Thee through the day, and to commit our ways to Thee at all times. Amen.
November 27
Certainly there never was a busier life than that of Jesus,—His whole great mission bounded by three hurried years. Yet in the morning He says to His friends: "Let us come apart and rest awhile;" and again when the evening is come He is in the mountain apart, alone. That is the place of worship in a world of work. It is not a refuge from duty, or a shirking of it; it is the renewal of power to meet one's duty and do it. The work of life is not to be well done with a hot, feverish, overwhelmed, and burdened mind; it is to be well done with a mind calmed and fortified by moments of withdrawal; and it is to be best done by one who from time to time pulls himself up in his eager life and permits God to speak to his soul.
Francis G. Peabody.