God is full of mercy and goodness. Far from chastising us, He embraces us with love. He makes us eat at His table. He serves us with His own hands and gives us the key to His treasures. He converses and delights Himself with us incessantly, in a thousand and a thousand ways. And He treats us in all respects as His favorite. In this way, we consider ourselves continually in His holy presence.
Sometimes we should consider ourselves a stone before a carver, of which He is to make a statue. Presenting ourselves thus before God, we should desire Him to make His perfect image in our souls and render us entirely like Himself. At other times, when we apply ourselves to prayer, we would feel all of our spirits lifted up without any care or effort on our part.
We have a God who is infinitely gracious and knows all our wants. He will come in His own time, and when you least expect it. Hope in Him more than ever. Thank Him with me for the favors He does you, particularly for the fortitude and patience which He gives you in your afflictions. It is a plain mark of the care He takes of you. Comfort yourself with Him, and give thanks for all.
God has infinite treasure to bestow, and we take so little through routine devotion which lasts but a moment. Blind as we are, we hinder God and stop the current of His graces. But when He finds a soul penetrated with a lively faith, He pours into it His graces and favors plentifully. There they flow like a torrent, which spreads itself with impetuosity and abundance after being forcibly stopped against its ordinary course when it has found a passage.
Yet we often stop this torrent by the little value we set upon it. Let us stop it no more. Let us enter into ourselves and break down the bank which hinders it. Let us make way for grace.
© Elle.
