A new calling can beckon us away from comfortable routine and from competencies already acquired.

Patient endurance permits us to cling to our faith in the Lord and our faith in His timing when we are being tossed about by the surf of circumstance. Even when a seeming undertow grasps us, somehow, in the tumbling, we are being carried forward, though battered and bruised.

Our journey is demanding enough that the need for reassurance as well as reminders is constant.

It is one of the great ironies of human history that some mortals with incorrect understanding of God and life's purposes sometimes scold God because of the abundance of human misery and suffering-which, indeed, lies all about us. Such individuals almost dare God to demonstrate His existence by straightening things out-and at once! But He is a much different kind of Father than that. Surely it is requisite to eternal life that we come to know God and Jesus Christ whom He has sent (see John 17:3).

The flame of family can warm us and at the same time be a perpetual pilot light to rekindle us.

Letting off steam always produces more heat than light.

The hardest work you and I will ever do is to put off our selfishness. It is heavy lifting!