A Day at a Time quotes

Notice carefully, however, how the promise runs.

Not, mark you, as your life is, not as your years are, not even as your weeks are, but as your days, so shall your strength be.

For each day as it comes, God’s promise is that strength will be given you, but just for a day at a time. The way to live under any circumstances, but especially in these hard weeks, is just a day at a time.

If we were meant to bear today what next week holds, surely we should have been permitted to see into next week. But we cannot. We cannot see a single second ahead.

God gives us Now, and Tomorrow He keeps to Himself.

Is there anything wiser or better we can do with our tomorrows than just to leave them quietly and trustfully with Him?

The habit of living ahead, as so many of us do, prevents us from getting the full taste and flavour of the happiness and blessing that are ours today.

I defy any man to be adequately grateful for this day’s sunshine if he is worrying all the time about the chance of a bad day tomorrow.

Mark Rutherford, merciless self-critic as he was, takes himself severely to task for this habit in his Autobiography. “I learned, alas!

these are the men to whom the miracles happen—who never know when they are beaten, who will face the most tremendous odds with “the half of a broken hope” for a shield, who are never done until they are dead.

What makes for success or failure in a man is nothing external to him at all. It is something within him. It is the temper of his spirit. It is the way he captains his own soul.

The other day I saw a photograph of a backyard. It was a little bit of a place, of the most forlorn appearance, littered with tin cans, overgrown with weeds, and hemmed round with blank walls of brick.

Right up the scale, from little things to the highest things, the man who looks for the shining possibilities and follows them, is the man on whom, in our shortsighted way, we say that Fortune smiles.

Rather, he smiles in such a determined way to Fortune, that she has at length to smile back!

Nobody pretends that it is easy, when we have failed, to gather our powers together and try again. But nearly all the big men have had to do that very thing.

In the next chapter we see the Rev. Amos himself going on his way blissfully unconscious of the poor opinion in which he is held, believing quite honestly in himself, and not a little proud of his abilities.

“We are poor plants,” says this keen student of character, “buoyed up by the air vessels of our own conceit.”

And a blessed thing, too, when you think of it! If we only knew all the disparaging remarks people make about us, we should never face up to our duties at all.

Therefore, they say, be careful never to suggest evil to yourself. Never say to yourself, “I’m going to make a mess of this,” or “I am not fit for that.”

Suggest success, happiness, health, and you beckon them to you.

Hope the best for yourself, and you pave the way for its coming.

On higher planes, the same holds true. Hope on, and, though you fall you will rise again. Believe that you will be enabled to face your trouble or temptation, and you will be brought through it somehow.

Even when the end of life is near, hope still, for beyond this best there is a better, and God’s road winds uphill all the way.

But, you say, this is just faith. I know it is. Run your hopes for yourself up as high as you can reach, and they will touch God and become faith. That is why you are to hope the best for yourself. Because—God.

When a man like the writer of Ecclesiastes gives his views on life, it is worth everybody’s while to listen.

A tabloid of experience is worth a ton of theory.

And it is from his own knowledge of men and experience of life that he has discovered that “he that observeth the wind shall not sow, and he that regardeth the clouds shall not reap.”

And so, the end of the matter for the Preacher is, once more,

Live your life royally, with a certain loving wastefulness, and an easy disregard of calculations.

Do all the good you can, and do it with a free hand, not asking to see your harvest before you sow, but taking your risk of it, and leaving the outcome with God.

It is the only way to paint it, if the picture is to be worth while at all. If we would have the work that we do live and count, our heart’s blood must go into it.

Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might.

What magnificent heart-stirring examples are coming to us every day just now, from sea and battlefield, of the good old British virtue of sticking in gamely to the end and “seeing the thing through!”

Yes, and do it now. For the amount of misery and suffering and remorse that is directly due to putting off the God-given impulse or generous purpose to some other season, is simply incalculable.

If all the kind letters had been written when the thought of writing was fresh and insistent⁠—ah me, how many burdened souls would have been the braver and the stronger.

If only the friendly visit had been paid when we thought about it—and why wasn’t it? “Never suppose,” says Bagshot, “that you can make up to a neglected friend by going to visit him in a hospital.

They are not shirking any of the duties of life. They are claiming no exemptions on the ground of their sorrow, and they excuse themselves from no duty merely because it would hurt.

They wear their hurt gently like a flower in the breast. They carry their sorrow like a coronet.

Out from their secret chambers they come, with washen face and brave lips to do their duty and refrain themselves. How beautiful it is! What a fine thing to see!

Others with their own private burdens and anxieties are encouraged to hold on to that hope and cheerfulness which are just the homely side of our faith in God and in the righteousness of our cause.

The cult of the washen face is contagious. It spreads like a beneficent stain.

And since it is entirely praiseworthy, we can but wish it to spread more and more.

The invalid in the home does not know how real religion becomes to all who watch her patience and unselfishness. And among the busy and vigorous we often catch hints and reflections, that they never suspect, of what Christlikeness means.

The man who has surrendered his life to God, indeed, is a channel of blessing to others beyond all he ever dreams of.

He must not be disheartened when he realises how little he is doing, for the truth is he is doing far, far more than he knows. Wherefore, my brother, be of good cheer, and render your service to Christ with a quiet heart.

His Christian zeal did not lead him to make a statement in a way that would irritate and rasp a man’s soul. There is a certain extreme candour affected by some Christian people, who pride themselves on always calling a spade a spade.

But if it hurts my friend to hear me say “spade” I know of no law of God that compels me to name the implement at all!

And then, lastly, we can have our goodness “evil spoken of” because it is so cold. It sometimes seems as if, in our day, warmth of manner had gone out of fashion.

But I don’t think any sensible person, not blinded by an absurd convention, cares for that type of rarified demeanour.

No one likes to get a hand to shake which feels like a dead fish!

In one of his books, Dr. Dale of Birmingham criticised that line in Keble’s hymn which speaks about the trivial round and the common task giving us “room to deny ourselves.”

It were a true and kindly Christian act. But never, as we call ourselves servants of Christ, never do our brother such a grievous irreparable wrong as to start about him a tale which may not be true.

God can and will forgive you your sins of speech. But even He cannot make clean the character which a foolish word has sullied.

King Arthur went further, however, than demanding that his knights should speak no slander. Their vow included the words, “no, nor listen to it.” And that is a high and difficult course to keep.

“Vestigia nulla retrorsum.” No footprints backwards. It would be a good motto for us all. Let the stories, the ill-humoured, unkind, uncharitable sayings that float and wander about everywhere, let them come to us as they will, but let the traces end there.

Be such a person that men may trace a story from its source down the chain to you, but never past you.

We can do that much at least for our friends. All about us is the constant, unquiet drift of gossip and distorted half-truth, as restless as the sand in the desert, dancing and whirling with every puff of wind.

Our most treasured friends are not always those whom we fall in love with at first sight. The thing we greatly fear dissolves like mist. An envied, but despaired-of, blessing is flung into our lap. A door of splendid hope opens in a dead wall.

Life is full of the unexpected as if wonder were one of the things God wanted very much to keep alive in us.

When, as you think, everything has been exhausted, God surprises you with a fresh gladness. And, aback of all, there is the unending surprise of God’s patience with us, and of that daily mercy of His, which we so ill requite, and so often forget.

And that inward conflict seems to many of them a sign that faith is waning, if not dead. They have forgotten that it is that very sense of inward conflict which proves that faith is not dead.

Dead things do not offer any resistance.

We ought by this time to have learned that a thing “may be for us an intellectual puzzle, and yet a sheer spiritual necessity,” and that the Christian faith is, for every soul who has once caught it.

There are a great many earnest and honest men to whom it is the best of news that Christian faith is not incompatible with very grave perplexities.

The real opposite of faith is not doubt, as so many suppose, but deliberate and satisfied denial.

Faith can live in the same life along with very many doubts—as a matter of fact, in the case of not a few of the most Christlike men of our time, it is living beside them constantly.

“Perpetual unbelief kept quiet.” Yes, but what keeps the clamouring doubts and fears under foot? Just yourself, just your highest self, the bit of you made for God, and unable to do without Him!

Faith is the vote of the whole man, of the best of the man, in the face of a protesting minority.

In other words, fight is a splendid word to use in speaking about faith.

It is not catching, and certainly your children will never catch it. It is said to be a good test of a religion that it can be preached at a street corner. But I know a better test than that.

Preach it to a child.

Set him in the midst of those who profess it. If their religion frightens him, freezes the smiles on his lips, and destroys his happiness, depend upon it, whatever sort of religion it be, it lacks the essential winsomeness of the religion of Jesus Christ.

We have all been helped and revived many a time merely by contact with some hearty cheerful soul. Who, for example, that had his choice, would elect for his family physician a man with a doleful air?

Have we not all found that a doctor’s cheery manner was as potent a medicine as any drug that he called by a Latin name?

Ay, and even when we are in trouble, and our hearts are sad and sore, I think we would all rather see the friend whose faith in God showed in a brave and buoyant outlook than one whose religion was of the dowie and despondent …

But from one province of scientific study especially there has come a wonderful array of evidence that makes it as certain as any fact can be that the happy states of mind do literally add to our strength in quite measurable directions.

There is, in strict fact, no tonic in all the world like gladness.

That being so, joy, and especially the best kind of it of which Nehemiah speaks, is not a luxury, not a condition you may legitimately cherish if you are fortunate enough to possess it. It is a sheer necessity. You can’t do without it.

It may appear a very wholesome spiritual exercise when you have gone a day’s journey into the wilderness and are faint, to reckon up what manner of man and disciple of Christ you are. But don’t do it then.

Nobody sees truly either himself or God, under a juniper tree.

And then, if possible, do not speak about your despondency. Don’t express your mood outwardly at all, if you can help it. Bottle it up if you can, and you will starve it all the sooner.

… Master is very gracious to forgive us when we come to Him in penitence to tell Him of the position we have lost by our faithlessness or our cowardice, but He does not consent to the ultimate defeat of the very feeblest of His soldiers.

“Go back and try again,” is His order.

There are many, as Dr. Matheson says, who offer us a golden tomorrow, but it is only Christ who enables us to retrieve our yesterday. For His grace is more than forgiveness.

You are looking for your hope somewhere else, anywhere else provided it be out of your present rut and drudgery. In reality your door of hope lies in the rut, in the valley itself.

It is not escape you need. It is just a braver faith that God is in your valley with you, and that He needs you there.

Take a firmer grip of that, and go back to where you serve, and you will find, please God, that even in your valley He has opened for you a door of Hope and Gladness.

… Christ’s name and try to do some of these things, I find that God has not forgotten after all, that, all the time He has been showing me the way to happiness, and I did not recognise it because it is not a straight road.

It’s not a question of seeking, but of forgetting to seek.

Happiness comes to you oftenest when you are intent on bringing it to your brother.

He found a more complete extenuation of Mary’s extravagance. It was because she loved much. Her gift was an offering of love to Himself. “She hath done it for my burial.” And that is the end of the whole matter, my brothers.

Love is always extravagant when measured by the tapeline of bare duty.

It always overflows. It breaks its box and gives everything it has. Yet, like the widow’s cruse of old, its casket is never empty, for even when it has given its all, the next needy case will find succour at that door.

There’s no question either that for those whose religion is a vital thing it is the right point of view. The real man is independent of either riches or poverty, because the real man is the man inside.

Riches is not you. Poverty is not you. You are what you are in your inner spirit.

The riches there are invisible, but they are eternal—love, faith, hope, peace. And the man who has these, as Paul had them, can honestly say that it is of relatively small moment whether he is in a material sense, rich or poor.

It may be their own fault. Doubtless in many cases it is. Or it may be temperament or outward circumstances that determine it. Anyhow, many have to walk, not in the light but in uncertainty, perplexity, and misgiving, and sometimes even in darkness.

But “a bird is a bird even though it cannot sing.”

And a Christian is a Christian still even though his soul is dark within him, and he goes on in fear, never daring to look up and hope at all.

Though there were no Christ, they would still follow where He had once seemed to invite them. And so doing and so following they came again to know. The darkness passed, and faith and gladness returned.

They had lost hold of God for a little, but He had never lost hold of them.

And, brethren, whatever the doubt or darkness be, that’s always true. That is what makes it possible at all. That is what may make it even blessed. For

No, he said, he had not.

“That’s a pity,” said the artisan, “for, eh, man, but ye have an awfu’ wee God.”

In all reverence, my brothers, that is what the absence of wonder brings us to, a small God, a small salvation, and a merely mechanical Christ.

Henry Drummond tells how his early days were made miserable by the conception he had of God as of some great staring eye in the heavens watching all he did.

But that is a policeman’s eye, not a father’s.

There are many tokens that, even yet, we have not realised what these blessed words of Jesus mean and imply.

He keeps silence. But, my brethren, can we not trust that silence since it is our Father’s? We have asked this bread in our pain and through our tears. We have asked it because it seems to us we need it so.

And whatever gift His silence hides, this at least is certain, it is not, it cannot be, only a stone.

Almighty God, who through Jesus Christ has taught us to call Thee our Father, we thank Thee that Thou hast chosen a name so dear to us to reveal Thy care and Love.