Giving Thanks for...(721-730)

The "wisdom from others" version:

721.“It’s as though we’re forever on the go, trying to prove to each other that we deserve to be loved. The doubt we harbor within us drives us to ever greater activity.... The enormous propensity to seek recognition, admiration, popularity and renown is rooted in the fear that, without all this, we are worthless…. The result is a state of mind that makes us life as though our worth as human beings depended on the way others react to us. We allow other people to determine who we are. We think we’re good if other people find us to be so; we think we’re intelligent if others consider us intelligent; we think we’re religious if others think so too… Thus, we sell our souls to the world.”-Henri Nouwen, Letters to Marc (HT: Tonia)

722. “Even if I turn out to be wrong, I shall bet my life in the assumption that this world is not idiotic, neither run by an absentee landlord, but that today, this very day, some stroke is being added to the cosmic canvas that in due course I shall understand with joy as a stroke made by the architect who calls Himself Alpha and Omega.” – Clyde Kilby (HT: John Piper)

723. "The life of true holiness is rooted in the soil of awed adoration. It does not grow elsewhere. That which grows elsewhere is not true holiness, whatever else it is. No blend of zeal, passion, self-denial, discipline, orthodoxy, and effort adds up to holiness where praise is lacking." - J.I. Packer

724. "If you would benefit, read with humility, simplicity and faith, and never seek the fame of being learned." -Thomas a Kempis

725. “Let him who cannot be alone beware of community…. Let him who is not in community beware of being alone…. Each by itself has profound pitfalls and perils. One who wants fellowship without solitude plunges into the void of words and feelings, and one who seeks solitude without fellowship perishes in the abyss of vanity, self-infatuation, and despair.” –Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together (HT: Melissa)

726. “…a day filled with noise and voices can be a day of silence. If the noises become for us the echo of the presence of God, if the voices are for us, messages and solicitations of God. When we speak of ourselves and are filled with ourselves, we leave silence behind. When we repeat the intimate words of God that he has left within us, our silence remains intact.” – Richard Foster, Celebration of Discipline (HT: Melissa)

727. "There are no ordinary people. You have never met a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations, these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat." -C.S.L., The Weight of Glory

728. “If they [children] are but slow, and do not come on as you could wish, yet wait on God to bring them forward, and to give them his grace in his own time; and while you are patiently waiting on him, that will encourage you to take pains with them, and will likewise make you patient and gentle towards them.” (Matthew Henry)

729. "...[Make] every pleasure into a channel of adoration. I don't mean simply by giving thanks for it. One must of course give thansk, but I mean something different. How shall I put it?... The distinction ought to become, and sometimes is, impossible; to receive it and to recognize its divine source are a single experience. This heavenly fruit is instantly redolent of the orchard where it grew. This sweet air whispers of the country from whence it blows. It is a message. We know we are being touched by a finger of that right hand at which there are pleasures for evermore." -C.S.L., Letters to Malcolm

730. "Do not lose your inward peace for anything whatsoever. Commend all to God, and then lie still and be at rest in God’s bosom…. Whatever happens, abide steadfast in a determination to cling simply to God.” - St. Francis de Sales