What a great writer is Jan Karon. But my favorite book by her is one she didn’t write and which, I suspect, has not received adequate attention. It’s a compilation of her (and Father Tim’s) favorite quotes, entitled A Continual Feast. Here are some samples I pulled from the book in the general category of thanksgiving, attitude, and contentment.

To live content with small means; to see elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable; and wealthy, not rich; to listen to stars and birds, babes and sages, with open heart; to study hard; to think quietly, act frankly, talk gently, await occasions, hurry never; in a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common – this is my symphony. – William Henry Channing, clergyman & reformer (1810-1884)

Remember this—that very little is needed to make a happy life. – Marcus Aurelius

He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has – Epictetus

Read quietly, slowly, word for word to enter into the subject more with the heart than with the mind. From time to time make short pauses to allow these truths time to flow through all the recesses of the soul.
–Jean-Pierre de Caussade, 18th-century French mystic

Yesterday, caught between competing demands, I became upset in Katrina’s doctor’s office. The claustrophobic waiting room, the blaring television, the germ-infested old magazines, and the inexcusably long wait made me a pacing,  fideting, complaining nervous wreck. By the time Dr. Zhou could finally see us, we didn’t have time to see him because I had a wedding to officiate. We rushed out of his office like bats out of hell.

This morning I’ve been reviewing my time management principles to see what went wrong, and my mind has been soothed by this quotation from a favorite writer, Dr. J. Oswald Sanders.

Our Lord moved through life with majestic and measured tread, never in a hurry and yet always thronged by demanding crowds, never giving those who sought His help a sense that He had any more important concerns than their particular interests. What was His secret? Knowing that every man’s life is a plan of God, He realized that His life and all the conditions in which it was to be worked out were alike under the perfect control of His Father…. His Father’s plan had been drawn with such meticulous accuracy that every hour was accounted for and adjusted to the overall purpose of His life. His calendar had been arranged, and His sole concern on earth was to fulfill the work given Him to do in the allotted hours.

PS – Tomorrow one of our TDF missionaries will speaking at church, and tomorrow night I’ll be teaching from Revelation 5 at KALEO. For the first of my messages on Managing Your Time, Managing Your Life, click here.

Here is an excerpt from my Easter sermon at The Donelson Fellowship this coming Sunday. Hope you can join us at 8:45 and 10:15.

 Because of Easter, all our problems are temporary, all our pressures are momentary, all our fears are fragmentary, and all our blessings are extraordinary.

During this morning’s Quiet Time, I was finishing a book by F. B. Meyer entitled The Christ-life for Your Life, and his final chapter is entitled “Heart-Rest.”  As Christians, wrote Meyer, we should have perpetual rest in our souls and spirits, and he uses two analogies from nature to describe it.  It is a…

Rest that is full of work; but like the cyclone, all the atoms of which revolve in turbulent motion around the central cavity of rest, so do all the activities of God revolve around His deepest heart which is tranquil and serene.

And it is possible, if you and I learn the lesson amid anxiety and sorrow and trial and pressure of work always to carry a heart so peaceful, so still, so serene as to be like the depth of the Atlantic which is not disturbed by the turbulent winds that sweep its surface.

As we grow in Christ and increasingly learn to rest in Him, those word-pictures become more and more real in our experience.  It wonderful to enjoy rest that’s full of work.

PS – If you want to view last Sunday’s sermon in Jackson, Mississippi, clink here and select the sermon, “The Lord’s My Shepherd—That’s Enough.”

From the writings of missionary pioneer Mary Slessor:

My life is one long daily, hourly record of answered prayer.  For physical health, for mental overstrain, for guidance given marvelously, for errors and dangers averted, for enmity to the Gospel subdued, for food provided at the exact hour needed, for everything that goes to make up life and my poor service.  I can testify, with a full and often wonder-stricken awe, that I believe God answers prayer.  I know God answers prayer.

Recently while preaching on the subject of guidance, I said that the Lord guides us as we spend time between the covers of His book.  That doesn’t mean we always find a specific verse telling us specifically what to do.  It means that as we fellowship with Him in the Scripture, very often certain verses will impart the necessary wisdom we need.  Last night in my bedtime reading I came across an excellent explanation of this.  Dr. V. Raymond Edman, in his little book, He Leadeth Me, pointed out that we can never find a specific verse to guide us in a specific way when we’re looking for it.

The Bible is not a kind of fetish or oracle into which we can glance for a word on guidance.  The Lord may lead us by the first verse we read upon opening the Book, but not necessarily so at all.  In fact, it is the common experience of devout and deeply-taught Christians that to seek a verse on guidance is never to find it. Rather, it is as we read and meditate upon the Word, perhaps in some relatively obscure portion thereof, that we are taught by the Holy Spirit and are led aright in the light thereof. ¹

One of the many things nobody ever tells you about middle age is that it’s such a nice change from being young.

–Dorothy Canfield Fisher

–Quoted by Jan Karon in A Continual Feast (NY: Viking Press, 2005), unnumbered page.

The next time you think you have an excuse why God can’t use you, consider the following:  Noah was a drunkard, Abraham was too old, Isaac was a daydreamer, Jacob was a liar, Leah was ugly, Joseph was abused, Moses was a murderer, Gideon was afraid, Samson had long hair, Rahab was a prostitute, Timothy was too young, David had an illicit affair, Elijah was suicidal, Isaiah preached naked, Job was bankrupt, John the Baptist ran around in a loin-cloth and ate locusts, Peter has hot-tempered, John was self-righteous.  The disciples fell asleep while praying, Martha fretted about everything, Mary Magdalene was demon-possessed, the boy with the fish and five rolls of bread was too obscure, the Samaritan woman was divorced more than once, Zacchaeus was too small, Paul was too religious, and Lazarus was dead.  No more excuses!

Author unknown, quoted (quoted by Jan Karon in A Continual Feast (NY: Viking Press, 2005), unnumbered page).

(Preaching) may be slow work; it often is; it is a long-term policy.  But my whole contention is that it works, that it pays, and that it is honoured, and must be, because it is God’s own method.  This is the thing to which He calls us, it is the thing into which He thrusts us forth, and therefore He will honour it.  He has always honoured it, and still honours it in the modern world, and after you have tried these others methods and schemes, and found that they will come to nothing, you will be driven back to this ultimately.  This is the method by which churches have always come into being.  You see it in the New Testament, and you see it in the subsequent history of the Church, and you can see it in this modern world.

Dr. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones in Preaching & Preachers (Grand Rapids:  Zondervan, 1971), 51-52.