Thoughts for the week:

November 7

It is not so much you, as the grace of God that is in you, that helps those around you. If you would help even those you dislike, you have to see that there is nothing in you to block the way, to keep God's grace from using you. Your own pride and selfishness are the greatest blocks. Keep those out of the way and God's grace will flow through you into the lives of others. Then all who come in contact with you can be helped in some way. Keep the channel open, free from those things that make your life futile and ineffective.

24 Hours a Day

November 10

When something happens to upset you and you are discouraged, try to feel that life's difficulties and troubles are not intended to arrest your progress in the spiritual life, but to test your strength and to increase your determination to keep going. Whatever it is that must be met, you are either to overcome it or use it. Nothing should daunt you for long, nor should any difficulty entirely overcome or conquer you. God's strength will always be there, waiting for you to use it. Nothing can be too great to be overcome, or if not overcome, then used.

 24 Hours a Day

November 11 Without Rehearsal

Someone said that living is like playing a violin solo in public and learning to play the instrument as we go along. This saying describes the experience well, but no one should worry about that. We are in this world for exactly that purpose - to learn.

 While we are learning we do not expect to produce a perfect work. On this plane we are all students, and what matters is that  each year we shall find the quality out our workmanship definitely better. People are sometimes depressed because their lives do not present a simple, logical, harmonious unfoldment, because their histories seem to be full of inconsistencies, repetitions, dead ends. This, however, is only to be expected during the learning period.

Your life has not been rehearsed. It is an adventure, and a discovery, and a traning, and it is the final goal that matters.

Around the Year with Emmet Fox (Excerpt)

November 13  The Use Of Intelligence

It is your duty to God to run your life on intelligent lines. God gives us as much intelligence as we can possibly need, but, unfortunately, in most cases we use very little of it.

Ask yourself today if you are really conducting your life intelligently. Are you eating and drinking intelligently? Do you select your reading intelligently? Do you spend your moeny intelligently? Do you consider intelligently the things that you hear, or do you just accept them uncritically? Do you exercise intelligence in carrying out your daily work? Do you seek to approach each new problem with intelligence instead of emotion?

Around the Year with Emmet Fox  (Excerpt)