Life's Highest Joy - Fellowship with God

PSALMS 31:24

PSALMS 39:9

THINK not again the wells of Life to fill,
By any conscious act of your own will;
Retire within the silence of your soul,
And let God's Spirit enter, and control.
The springs of feeling which you thought were stilled,

ANNA J. GRANNISS

WHEN you find that weariness depresses or amusement distracts you, you will calmly turn with an untroubled spirit to your Heavenly Father, who is always holding out His arms to you. You will look to Him for gladness and refreshment when depressed, for moderation and recollection when in good spirits, and you will find that He will never leave you to want. A trustful glance, a silent movement of the heart towards Him will renew your strength; and though you may often feel as if your soul were downcast and numb, whatever God calls you to do, He will give you power and courage to perform. Our Heavenly Father, so far from ever overlooking us, is only waiting to find our hearts open, to pour into them the torrents of His grace.

FRANÇOIS DE LA MOTHE FÉNELON

THAT Was the Shepherd of the flock; He knew
The distant voice of one poor sheep astray;
It had forsaken Him, but He was true,
And listened for its bleating night and day.

And thou, fallen soul, afraid to live or die
In the deep pit that will not set thee free,
Lift up to Him the helpless homeward cry,
For all that tender love is seeking thee.
ANNA L. WARING

OUR Divine Shepherd followed after His lost sheep for three and thirty years, in a way so painful and so thorny that He spilt His heart's blood and left His life there. The poor sheep now follows Him through obedience to His commands, or through a desire (though at times but faint) to obey Him, calling upon Him and beseeching Him earnestly for help; is it possible that He should now refuse to turn upon it His life-giving look? Will He not give ear to it, and lay it upon His divine shoulders, rejoicing over it with all His friends and with the angels of Heaven? For if our Lord ceased not to search most diligently and lovingly for the blind and deaf sinner, the lost drachma of the Gospel, till He found it, how is it possible that He should abandon him who, as a lost sheep, cries and calls upon his Shepherd?
LORENZO SCUPOLI

I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me
GALATIANS 2:20

THOUGH Christ a thousand times in Bethlehem be born,
If He's not born in thee, thy soul is still forlorn.

JOHANN SCHEMES

THE great mystery of the Gospel does not lie in Christ without us only (though we must know also what He has done for us); but the very pith and kernel of it consists in Christ inwardly formed in our hearts.

RALPH CUDWORTH

When therefore the first spark of a desire after God arises in thy soul, cherish it with all thy care, give all thy heart into it; it is nothing less than a touch of the divine loadstone, that is to draw thee out of the vanity of time, into the riches of eternity. Get up therefore, and follow it as gladly as the wise men of the east followed the star from heaven that appeared to them. It will do for thee as the star did for them, it will lead thee to the birth of Jesus, not in a stable at Bethlehem in Judea, but to the birth of Jesus in the dark centre of thine own soul.

WILLIAM LAW