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“My
faith has found a resting place, Not in device or
creed; I trust the Ever-living One, His wounds for me shall plead. I need no
other argument, I need no other
plea. It is enough that Jesus died, And that He died for me.” Lidie H. Edmund
“We
who have believed enter that rest.” Hebrews 4:3
“’Say’s I to
myself’ should be the motto of my journal.
So wrote Henry David Thoreau, 11 November 1851.
Jeffrey S. Cramer, Curator of collections of the
Thoreau Institute at Walden Woods, writes:
Thoreau’s business was to explore the fundamental facts of existence in
order to be able to recognize the real eternal truth and substance underlying
all existence, as distinct from the actual, the distracting and sometimes
misdirecting commotion that prevents our paying attention. The task he set himself
was to find the
reality that transcended his day-to-day experiences. It was a sacred quest for
the miracle that
daily confronted him: life; nature; spirit.” (From the Introduction to the book I to Myself,
an annotated selection from the journal of Henry D. Thoreau).
Thoreau’s
writings have been a life-long inspiration for my own journals....acg
Elsewhere in my journals I have quoted
doxologies. None, however, meets the
need of this new year’s beginning hour more than these words (from Jude
1:24): “Now unto Him that
is able to keep you from falling,
and to present you faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding
joy.” Without thinking of myself a seer,
a sage, or a prophet, I observe our world with all the objectivity I can muster
and cannot help but suggest that this New Year will bring cataclysmic changes
in our world like none other. Surely it
will require a falling on our knees in faith for dependence on God to live in
wholeness and health. In my life time I
cannot remember a previous moment when evil and uncertainty have been more
pervasive. In keeping with such
foreboding, these lines from Amy Carmichael ‘s strong faith bring me great
encouragement:
From prayer
that asks that I may be
Sheltered from winds that beat on Thee,
From fearing when I should aspire,
From faltering when I should climb higher
From silken self, O Captain, free
Thy soldier who would follow Thee.
From subtle
love of softening things,
From easy choices, weakenings,
(Not thus are spirits fortified,
Not this way went the Crucified)
From all that dims Thy Calvary
O Lamb of God, deliver me.
Give me the
love that leads the way,
The faith that nothing can dismay
The hope no disappointments tire,
The passion that will burn like fire;
Let me not sink to be a clod;
Make me Thy fuel, Flame of God
Amy Carmichael,
Flame of God
 I spent a major portion of the Advent season reading the biography of
Adoniram Judson, famous American missionary to Burma during the first half of
the 19th century. No other
biography has absorbed my interest with such intensity. To read
the story of his life is to come to
know what it means to live a purpose driven life and to ask one’s self in
comparison, how miserably short one may have been is using one’s time and
talents with equal measure. The book
underscores what Scripture means when it speaks of redeeming one’s time.
“Grace is not something
one earns or purchases; grace
is a treasure that is found! When a
person finally realizes that salvation is only by the grace of God, received
through faith in the saving work of Christ, he or she has made the greatest discovery
that could ever be made,
for it brings eternal life. But
there is an even greater dimension to the grace of God. When we do “find”
grace, it is actually
because God in His infinitely precious grace has found us and revealed to us
the Savior of our souls. Just as God
found Moses in the desert and found Paul on the road to Damascus, then saved
and called them to His service, so He finds us, and then we also find His
saving grace.” Henry M.
Morris, Days of Praise 
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