Spiritual thoughts for the week:

September 4

Do not become encumbered by petty annoyances. Never respond to emotional upsets by emotional upset. Try to keep calm in all circumstances. Try not to fight back. Call on the grace of God to calm you when you feel like retaliating. Look to God for the inner strength to drop those resentments that drag you down. If you are burdened by annoyances, you will lose your inward peace and the spirit of God will be shut out. Try to keep peaceful within.

24 Hours a Day

September 5

Spiritual progress is the law of your being. Try to see around you more and more of beauty and truth, knowledge and power. Today try to be stronger, braver, more loving as a result of what you did yesterday. This law of spiritual progress gives meaning and purpose to your life. Always expect better things ahead. You can accomplish much good through the strength of God's spirit in you. Never be too discouraged. The world is sure to get better, in spite of setbacks of war, hate, and greed. Be part of the cure of the world's ill, rather than part of the disease.

24 Hours a Day

September 6  Can Human Nature Change?

Shallow thinkers sometimes say doggedly and pessimistically, "Human nature never changes," or, "You can't change human nature." The truth is that there is no need for human nature to change. The nature of man is such that he can bring an unlimited quantity of good into his life. That is his nature, and no better arrangement could be imagined.  

Around the Year with Emmet Fox (Excerpt)

September 7  No Grave Robbing

Don't be a grave robber. Let corpses alone. In due course nature disposes of corpses, if they remain undisturbed. Every time you dig up an old grievance or an old mistake by rehearsing it in your mind or, still worse, by telling someone else about it, you are simply ripping open a grave - and you know what you may expect to find.

Live the present. Prepare intelligently for the future - and let the past alone. Make a law for yourself today that you are not going to touch mentally any negative thing that has happened up to the present moment - and keep that law. Life is too precious for grave robbing. The past is past - liquidate it. If a negative memory comes into your mind, cremate it with the right thought (the fire of Love) and forget it.

Around the Year with Emmet Fox  (Excerpt)