There are many rooms in the House of Pain.

He hath never failed thee yet. Never will His love forget. O fret not thyself nor let Thy heart be troubled, Neither let it be afraid.

Bare heights of loneliness...a wilderness whose burning winds sweep over glowing sands, what are they to HIM? Even there He can refresh us, even there He can renew us.

God, harden me against myself!

We have one crystal clear reason apart from the blessed happiness of this way of life. It is this: prayer is the core of our day. Take prayer out, and the day would collapse, would be pithless, a straw blown in the wind. But how can you pray--really pray, I mean--with one against who you have a grudge or whom you have been discussing critically with another? Try it. You will find it cannot be done.

But all the great staining temptations, to selfishness, ambition, and other strong sins that violently affront the soul, appear first in the region of the mind, and can be fought and conquered there. We have been given the power to close the door of the mind. We can lose this power through disuse or increase it by use, by the daily discipline of the inner man in things which seem small and by reliance upon the word of the Spirit of Truth. “It is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure. It is as though He said, 'Learn to live in your will, not in your feelings.'

Ours should be the love that asks not 'how little?' but, 'how much?' The love that delights to pour out everything upon the feet of our Beloved.