Hannah Whithall Smith’s critics have noted that the title of her most famous book, The Christian’s Secret of a Happy Life, is ironic, given the difficulties she faced throughout her life. Why take advice from someone whose life was so fraught with disappointment? you might ask. How is Hannah Whithall Smith’s life a model […]
Still Saturday: For Those Who Suffer
Around the turn of the twentieth century, a bar of steel was worth about $5 . . . But the more it was shaped, hammered, put through the fire, beaten, pounded, and polished, the greater its value. May we use this analogy as a reminder to be still, silent, and long-suffering, for it is […]
Still Saturday: Finest of Wealth
We are stretched thin–to the point of translucence. Hold me up to the light, and I will disappear. All you will see are the things I do. I need more Sabbath keeping than moments snatched here and there. Those short patches of peace have begun to feel like stealing time. So, I let the […]
Still Saturday: To Be of Use
“Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin” — they simply are! Think of the sea, the air, the sun, the stars, and the moon–all of these simply are as well–yet what a ministry and service they render on our behalf! So often we impair God’s designed influence, which […]
Still Saturday: Childlike
Lord, make me childlike. Deliver me from the urge to compete with another for place or prestige or position. I would be simple and artless as a little child. Deliver me from pose and pretense. Forgive me for thinking of myself. Help me to forget myself and find my true peace in beholding Thee. That […]
Still Saturday: Waiting
Waiting on God requires the willingness to bear uncertainty, to carry within oneself the unanswered question, lifting the heart to God about it whenever it intrudes upon one’s thoughts. ~ Elisabeth Elliot Short and simple words posted on Facebook by my dear friend, Tami Heim, this week, and I haven’t been able to get them […]
Still Saturday: Interruptions
The most purposeful people I know rarely overmanage time, and when they do it’s usually because they’re lapsing into drivenness, into a loss of purpose for which they overcompensate with mere busyness. No, the distinguishing mark of the purposeful is not time management. It’s that they notice. They’re fully awake. Jesus, for example. He […]
Still Saturday: How to be Unruffled
Even were I never to speak to you, you would be well rewarded for setting apart this time, if you only sat still and longed for Me, if you just drew hungering breaths for Me, as you do for the fresh pure air of the open. Be still, be calm. Wait before Me. Learn […]
Still Saturday: Today
TODAY Today I’m flying low and I’m not saying a word. I’m letting all the voodoos of ambition sleep. The world goes on as it must, the bees in the garden rumbling a little, the fish leaping, the gnats getting eaten. And so forth. But I’m taking the day off. Quiet […]
Still Saturday: Presence
“If God is present at every point in space, if we cannot go where He is not, cannot even conceive of a place where He is not, why then has not that Presence become the one universally celebrated fact of the world? The patriarch Jacob, ‘in the waste howling wilderness,’ gave the answer […]
