We thank Thee, our Father, that the Satisfaction of righteousness is present as well as future. Help us, we beseech Thee, to live this day so that earth shall seem like heaven. In the proof of our adequacy to the demands of duty may we find a delight that shall more than compensate us for any pleasure or profit surrendered for its sake. May the sense of Thine approval sanctify our joys and comfort our sorrows. May we win love by deserving it, and find happiness in bestowing it. Through obedience to Thy will may we add strength and spiritual beauty to our own character and carry into the evening shadows the sweet assurance that other lives have been enriched by our kind words and helpful deeds. We ask it as Thy children. Amen.
February 19
'Tis always morning somewhere, and above
The awakening continents from shore to shore.
Somewhere the birds are singing evermore.
Henry W. Longfellow.
The inconveniences and the petty annoyances, the pains and the sorrows, do we ever forget them? Indeed, no; we grumble and groan continually. The blue sky and the sunshine, the everyday mercies and the wonderful blessings that we accept as a matter of course, do we remember to rejoice because of them? Only too seldom. On this one day, do let us be sincerely and expressedly thankful.
Anonymous.
Our Father, we rejoice to believe that Thy love is the eternal sun which knows no eclipse and that in its pure shining, we Thy children can go forward with brave hearts and radiant hopes, assured that Thy wisdom hath left nothing unfinished and that "Thy goodness faileth never." We greet this new day with newness of joy in Thy Fatherhood as our personal right, and with ascending ideals of a service whose gracious light shall kindle other souls into a larger hopefulness and a deeper tenderness. We would fill this day with all sunny thoughts, with all cheering words and with all generous deeds, and thus the more effectually bring the divine light into the human and make clearer the outlines of a heaven on earth. Amen.
February 20