February 4

Thy bars shall be iron and brass; And as thy days, so shall thy strength be. — Deut 33:25

Life is not a May-game, but a battle and a march, a warfare with principalities and powers. No idle promenade through fragrant orange groves and green flowery spaces, waited on by coral muses, and the rosy hours; it is a stern pilgrimage through the rough, burning, sandy solitudes, through regions of thick-ribbed ice.
— Thomas Carlyle.

For all sweet and pleasant passages in the great story of life men may well thank God; for leisure and ease and health and friendship may God make us truly and humbly grateful; but our chief song of thanksgiving must be always for our kinship with him, with all that such divinity of greatness brings of peril, hardship, toil, and sacrifice.
— Hamilton Mabie.

Prayer

My Father, help me to choose the road that leads to my work, and may I not fail to reach it, by wandering away from it. Keep me in touch with the human side of life, holding in mind that "Truth and honesty are the noblest works of God." Amen.