Ultimate hope and daily grumpiness are not reconcilable.

Many of those engaged in a lemming-like march to the sea are proud of their individualism.

We are vulnerable if we can be taken by a wave of emotion, invaded by an invidious impulse, roughed up by resentment, or engulfed by a surge of selfishness.

Within what is allotted to us, we can have spiritual contentment.

What we insistently desire, over time, is what we become.

We may never become accustomed to untrue and unjust criticism of us but we ought not to be immobilized by it.

In conclusion, the submission of one's will is really the only uniquely personal thing we have to place on God's altar. The many other things we 'give,' brothers and sisters, are actually the things He has already given or loaned to us. However, when you and I finally submit ourselves, by letting our individual wills be swallowed up in God's will, then we are really giving something to Him! It is the only possession which is truly ours to give!