Pansies for Thoughts E-Book

Grace Livingston Hill

• Herausgeber: Classica Libris
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

The young Grace Livingston compiled this book using quotes from her aunt’s works; Isabella Macdonald Alden (who wrote under the pen name “Pansy”). It is a quote for each day of the year from one of the “Pansy Books” plus a bit of related scripture or verse.

Leseprobe

Grace Livingston Hill

PANSIES FOR THOUGHTS

FROM THE WRITINGS OF PANSY — MRS G R ALDEN

COMPILED AND ARRANGED WITH AN APPROPRIATE TEXT FOR EACH DAY BY GRACE LIVINGSTON

Copyright

First published in 1888

Copyright © 2019 Classica Libris

PREFACE

I have followed with absorbing interest the compilation of this volume. As I have watched the fair young head bent from day to day over “The Deathless Book,” making quotations from its inspired pages that should repeat and emphasize my own thoughts, there has been a grateful, uplifting, humbling realization of the fact that I was being linked with immortality! For certainly the words that accompany my simple ones make each page glow with a light that shall have power to shine even to the very gates of the eternal city.

Moreover, as I have watched the thoughtful face of the compiler brighten and flush, and her eyes grow earnest while her heart took in some solemn charge of the Master, I have felt that, as she transmitted it to paper, there went with it a prayer that the Holy Spirit who had guided her choice, would use these pages in a way to lead some souls daily higher, and higher, even into the “shining light” of the “perfect day.”

In this wish and prayer I join her earnestly, as the little book goes out to do its work.

Pansy

JANUARY

1. The Lord knows the end from the beginning, and nothing is surer than that He uses His children to carry out His plans.

An Endless Chain

“He knoweth thy walking through this great wilderness.”

2. This is my verse when I am discouraged: “Wait on the Lord; be of good courage and he shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the Lord.”

Ester Ried

“No word He hath spoken,

Was ever yet broken.”

3. “Pity’s sake! if you weren’t going to be a better woman by ten thousand times when you get to heaven than you are here, why, heaven would be an out and out disappointment, that’s all,” said Priscilla Hunter.

Miss Priscilla Hunter

“And as we have borne the image of the earthly, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly.”

4. Conscience, working all alone, is a very uncomfortable and disagreeable companion, and often accomplishes for the time being nothing beyond making his victim disagreeable.

The Chautauqua Girls at Home

“Their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the meanwhile accusing or else excusing one another.”

5. You take a diamond and throw it down in the dirt and filth, and put your foot on it and grind it in, and leave it there, sinking and soiling, day after day, year after year, and when somebody comes along and picks it out, how much will it gleam for Him at first? Yet the diamond is there.

Ester Ried Yet Speaking

“Thou shalt be a crown of glory in the hand of the Lord, and a royal diadem in the hand of thy God.”

6. “Peace with God!” It expresses so much! Peace is greater than joy, or comfort, or rest.

Ruth Erskine’s Crosses

“And let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to the which also you are called in one body.”

7. Mine is the doing when He says the word, but His is the bringing to pass. And that, you see, is the end of all worrying and planning and doubt. There is no rest nor comfort outside of that conclusion.

The Randolphs

“Then he said unto the man, Stretch forth thine hand. And he stretched it forth; and it was restored whole, like as the other.”

8. A sweet-faced cooing baby, arrayed in fine white-broidered garments, with bright eyes and dimpled chin, and mouth that breaks into radiant smiles whenever one looks that way, is an exquisite bit of enjoyment for anybody.

Mrs. Solomon Smith

“And when she saw that he was a goodly child she hid him three months.”

9. What a fearful world it would be if things just happened, with nobody to manage or control!

An Endless Chain

“For the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to show himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect toward him.”

10. We grieve sometimes that we cannot know people’s hearts, and foresee what would please, and what would irritate. Hearts calm down wonderfully sometimes; what need then to know of their depths while at boiling point? But what sights must the all-seeing God look down upon! Sights in tenderness shut away from the gaze of His weak children.

A New Graft

“For He knoweth the secrets of the heart.”

11. “Dilligent in business, serving the Lord.” There is no period dividing these. I long ago discovered that I could make a bed and sweep a room for His sake, as surely as I could speak a word for Him.

A New Graft

“Faith is the golden thread on which we string for offering,

Our feeble deeds of poor self-sacrifice;

Unworthy gifts, yet in His grace, the King

   Accounts them pearls of price.”

12. I know people who suppose it would be almost irreverent to take their domestic bewilderments to Christ. I cannot think what kind of a friend they imagine Him to be, if they are afraid to go to Him with everything.

The Pocket Measure

“Commit thy way unto the Lord; trust also in him; and he shall bring it to pass.”

13. Although the Lord is gracious and forbearing, and kindly gives me the work to do here and there for Him, He can, when He chooses, get along entirely without any help.

Three People

“For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things: to whom be glory forever.”

14. You may often speak words which spring up, and bear fruit that reaches up to God; though you do not know it, and will not, until in heaven you take your crown, and question why there are so many stars.

Tip Lewis and His Lamp

“Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life.”

15. The heart must understand that whatever the Lord directs it intends to do, or there is no opening of the door for Him.

Eighty-Seven

“All that the Lord hath said we will do, and be obedient.”

16. To God, nothing that an immortal soul can say, appears trivial, because he sees the waves of influence which are stirred years ahead by the quiet words.

Ruth Erskine’s Crosses

“Words are things of little cost,

Quickly spoken, quickly lost;

We forget them, but they stand

Witnesses at God’s right hand;

And their testimony bear

For us, or against us there.”

17. There is no place on the road so dark but that the Bible can light you through, if you try it. When you don’t understand it, there is always Jesus to go to, you know.

Tip Lewis and His Lamp

“Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.”

18. God’s son! To go to Him, saying, “Father, what shall I do about this?” and, “What would you advise as to that?”

Eighty-Seven

“I will be his God, and he shall be my son.”

19. God never promised to compromise with his own, never promised to hear a prayer which began with an “If.” Entire consecration means all the “ifs” thrown down at the feet of the Lord for Him to control as He will.

Ruth Erskine’s Crosses

“Nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt.”

20. Is it so strange a thing that the Lord can keep his own?

Three People

“He will not suffer thy foot to be moved: He that keepeth thee will not slumber.

Behold, He that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep.

The Lord is thy keeper: the Lord is thy shade upon thy right hand.”

21. It is wonderful, after all, how rarely in this wicked world we meet with other than respect in answer to a frank avowal of our determination to be on the Lord’s side.

The Chautauqua Girls at Home

“Wherefore Thou art great, O, Lord God: for there is none like Thee, neither is there any God beside Thee, according to all that we have heard with our ears.”

22. Individual effort is so necessary that I have thought perhaps the Holy Spirit turns our thoughts most directly toward one person at a time, so that we may concentrate our efforts.

A New Graft

“While Peter thought on the vision, the Spirit said unto him, Behold, three men seek thee.

Arise therefore, and get thee down, and go with them, doubting nothing: for I have sent them.”

23. I don’t know how a thoughtful man can ever reject the idea of an overruling Providence.

The Randolphs

“The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.”

24. Shall you and I ever stand beside a new-made grave, receiving one whom we have known ever so slightly, and have to settle with our conscience and our Saviour, because we have not invited that one to come to Jesus?

Ester Ried

“And the Lord said unto Cain, Where is Abel thy brother? And he said, I know not: am I my brother’s keeper?”

25. Never mind whether you are now one of His children or not; claim the place of a child because you need to be, and wish to be, and mean to be one from this moment.

The Pocket Measure

“Beloved, now are we the sons of God.”

26. “She came finally to understand that the point was not, Was I a Christian last year, or last week, or even yesterday? but, Do I mean to be one today — now?

The Randolphs

“If a man abide not in Me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned.”

27. The flush had died away from Ruth’s face; she was growing very pale. This was a rapid descent from the mount whereon she had been standing: only a moment before, she had felt as though earth and its commonplaces could not touch her again; because she had been permitted for a moment to stand face to face with Jesus Christ. Yet here was the keen, cruel world at her very elbow!

Judge Burnham’s Daughters

“In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good comfort: I have overcome the world.”

28. I don’t know whether it will work or not; and what is more, I never shall know until I try. There has many a thing been accomplished in this world that never would have been, had people settled it in their minds that it couldn’t be done before they had made vigorous efforts to do it.

My Daughter Susan

“I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.”

29. Isn’t it pleasant to think that in all those little things He is watching over you, and that you make Him glad when you do them well?

Tip Lewis and His Lamp

“He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much: and he that is unjust in the least is unjust also in much.”

30. “Cleanse thou me from secret faults,” prayed the inspired writer. May he not have meant those faults so secret that it takes the voice of God to reveal them to our hearts?

Ruth Erskine’s Crosses

“For the Lord seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart.”