August 31

Try not to give in to criticism, blame, scorn, or judgment of others when you are trying to help them. Effectiveness in helping others depends on controlling yourself. You may be swept away by a temporary natural urge to criticize or blame, unless you keep a tight rein on your emotions. You should have a firm foundation of spiritual living which makes you truly humble, if you are going to really help other people. Go easy on them and be hard on yourself. That is the way you can be used most to uplift a despairing spirit. And seek no personal recognition for what you are used by God to accomplish.

24 Hours a Day

September 1   Divine Love Never Fails

Consciously or unconsciously, people think of Love as some sort of power outside themselves; and they expect that presently, if they beg hard enough, this Power will come down and rescue them. There is, in fact, no such outside power, and therefore you cannot receive help in that way. The only place where Love can exist, as far as you are concerned, is in your own heart. Any love that is not in our heart does not exist for you.  

Around the Year with Emmet Fox (Excerpt)

September 3

The spiritual life depends upon the Unseen. To live the spiritual life, you must believe in the Unseen. Try not to lose consciousness of God's spirit in you and in others. As a child in its mother's arms, stay sheltered in the understanding and love of God. God will relieve you of the weight of worry and care, misery and depression, want and woe, faintness and heartache, if you will let Him. Lift up your eyes from earth's troubles and view the glory of the unseen God. Each day try to see more good in people, more of the Unseen in the seen.

24 Hours a Day

September 4  Not Dead, But Sleepeth

Most hotel rooms are furnished with a notice that says, "do not disturb." The guest has only to hang this outside the door and he can sleep in peace as long as he wishes. Some people appear to have hung such a notice on their brains; they deeply resent anything like a new idea, or even a new and better way of considering familiar things. They are slumbering away their lives in a kind of semi-coma; repeating mechanically the time-worn phrases and threadbare ideas of the past. Not DEAD, BUT SLEEPETH, might very well be said of then, and, indeed, their consciousness is a mental cemetery.  

Around the Year with Emmet Fox  (Excerpt)