I will seek elegance rather than luxury, refinement rather than fashion.I will seek to be worthy more than respectable, wealthy and not rich.I will study hard, think quietly, talk gently, act frankly.I will listen to stars and birds, babes and sages, with an open heart.I will bear all things cheerfully, do all things bravely await occasions and hurry never.In a word I will let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious grow up through the common.
In his 1942 devotional Abundant Living, E. Stanley Jones, Methodist doctor and missionary to India, writes:
The early Christians did not say in dismay, "Look what the world has come to," but in delight, "Look what has come to the world." They saw not merely the ruin, but the Resource for the reconstruction of that ruin. They saw not merely that sin did abound, but that grace did much more abound.
On that assurance the pivot of history swung from blank despair, loss of moral nerve, and fatalism, to faith and confidence that at last sin had met its match.
http://www.dodgenet.com/~tzingale/sermonb/3adventillustrations.html
