King Jesus why did you choose a lowly ass to carry you to ride in your parade? Had you no friend who owned a horse—a royal mount with spirit fit for a king to ride? Why choose an ass small unassuming beast of burden trained to plow not carry kings.
King Jesus why did you choose me a lowly unimportant person to bear you in my world today? I’m poor and unimportant trained to work not carry kings—let alone the King of kings and yet you’ve chosen me to carry you in triumph in this world’s parade. King Jesus keep me small so all may see how great you are keep me humble so all may say Blessed is he who cometh in the name of the Lord not what a great ass he rides.
—Joseph Bayly in Psalms of My Life; calligraphy by Tim Botts
Keep Moving
I find the great thing in this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving: To reach the port of heaven, we must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it—but we must sail, and not drift, nor lie at anchor.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes in The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table
Little Wonder
A few years ago, I went to a free outdoor concert. It wasn’t any old concert. Van Cliburn was playing a Tchaikovsky concerto with the Philadelphia Orchestra—Eugene Ormandy conducting. That kind of wonderful sound you get to hear live only a few times in one lifetime.
In front of me sat half a dozen teenagers. Eating popcorn. That kind of sound has been made pretty often in the history of the world. But not often with Eugene Ormandy-conducting. They might as well have been listening to a player piano.
That event has become a metaphor for me of how we live in God’s universe. With little wonder. Little respect. We might as well live in a human-made garbage dump for all we appreciate the beauty and wonder God has surrounded us with. We scarcely seem able to distinguish between the Rocky Mountains and a Formica kitchen.
—John Alexander in The Other Side (Jan./Feb. 1989)
The Road To Success
We must make sure that we do not decide that we shall succeed. If we decide to succeed then we may succeed without succeeding in God’s way. But if we go on from day to day seeking to do his will, then we shall be prepared to receive success from him if he wills it; and if he does not, then humbly to say—It is God’s decision that David shall not build the temple, but he will raise up Solomon.
—W. A. Visser’t Hooft, quoted in That They May Have Life, by Daniel T. Niles
Turning Point
All historians must confess that the turning point of the race is the cross of Christ. It would be impossible to fix any other hinge of history. From that moment the power of evil received its mortal wound. It dies hard, but from that hour it was doomed.
—Charles H. Spurgeon in the Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit (Vol. 29)
God Did It All
If I could give you information of my life it would be to show how a woman of very ordinary ability has been led by God in strange and unaccustomed paths to do in His service what He has done in her. And if I could tell you all, you would see how God has done all, and I nothing. I have worked hard, very hard, that is all; and I have never refused God anything.
—Florence Nightingale, quoted in My Heart Sings
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