The day is done; dear God, may I Safe in Your watchful presence lie. O make Your Love to live supreme In every passing dream I dream. May Night's kind hours come and see How still and good a Child can be. Then will they leave some gifts behind To bless my body, heart, and mind.
The day is done; O dear God, spread Your Love and Wisdom o'er my head. Rest for my body, heart, and mind In Sleep's great Kingdom I shall find. Good Dreams, like faithful Friends, shall be A sweet and restful help to me. Then shall another day bring light After the blessings of to-night. AMEN.
I need not wait for special times To speak to God in prayer; Nor do I always have to kneel To feel that He is there. No matter what the time or place, I only need to be Just full of faith that God is near, And He will succor me.
God's love for me is not alone In times of joy and power; It glows with light and comfort through Each darkened day or hour. In times of work, or thought, or play, Through hours of pain or care, God lives with constant love, and hears Each earnest wish and prayer.
"Above all, my brothers and sisters, do not swear—not by heaven or by earth or by anything else. All you need to say is a simple “Yes” or “No.” Otherwise you will be condemned." James 5:12
"Simply let your ‘Yes’ be ‘Yes,’ and your ‘No,’ ‘No.’ Anything more comes from the evil one." Matthew 5:37
Our news media has been having a difficult time pronouncing the names of some of the towns in Russia or Ukraine. They are long names and hard to pronounce, and the attempts that people make to say them are often very funny. But there are words in our own language that are hard to speak. One of the shortest words that we know is one of the very hardest to say sometimes. It is the little word of two letters, ''No." Someone was telling me of a young man who had gone wrong. His parents did everything for him and gave him every advantage. The great trouble was that they had not taught him to say ''No." When temptation came to him to do what was wrong, he never had the courage to stand up and say, "No, I will not." He had learned many things but he had never learned that. There was a little boy named Albert, and one fine summer afternoon his mother told him that he must not go swimming that day. So he made up his mind to stay around the house the rest of the day. But before long he heard the boys coming down the road, and calling out to him, "Come on. Let's go swimming. The water is fine.'' Now, Albert's mother had told him not to go, and he ought to have said, ''No, I can't go today." But just then Albert began to think about that water and the fun that the boys were going to have, and when he tried to say ''No," it seemed to stick somewhere in his throat, and wouldn't come out. The first thing he knew, he was going down the road with the boys to do what his mother had told him he must not do, and all because he hadn't been able to say "No." We have all had times when it was hard to say that little word that seems so easy. When an army pitches its tents for the night, sentinels are stationed all around the camp, and no one is allowed to go through those lines of sentinels, unless he is able to give the password. Do you know that there is a password to life which we must all learn, before we can enter into the larger, greater life that every boy and every girl longs for? It is the little word "No." There are so many times in life when you need that word more than anything else in the world. When bad companions come, and they try to induce you to do what you understand is wrong, have the courage to say "No," and mean ''No." There are some people who say ''No " and do not half mean it. A little coaxing will make them say "Yes." Our text tells us what to do. "Let your nay be nay."Say ''No" and mean it, and hold to it. Then we must say "No" when we are tempted to forget what we have been taught in Sunday school, and in our Christian homes. Long ago there was a young man in the employ of Stephen Girard, the great Philadelphia merchant. One day Mr. Girard told him to do some work on Sunday. The young man said, "No, I am a Christian, and I promised my mother that I would not work on Sunday." Mr. Girard told him he could not keep him unless he was willing to do as he was ordered, and he was discharged. Not very long after a man came to Mr. Girard and said, "I need a young man to fill a very responsible position in my business. Do you know of anyone? "Mr. Girard answered, ''I know just the man. I had to let him go because he would not work on Sunday. He wasn't afraid to say ''No,'' and stick to it, even when it meant the loss of his place. You will not make any mistake to take him." And so that young man found a better position than the one he had lost. All the world honors the boy or girl who is able to say ''No." The bravest boy is not he who fights the most. That is not real courage. A dog, or a snake, or a bear will fight bravely if he is angry enough. The highest, finest kind of courage is that of the boy who is able to say ''No" when he is tempted to do something that is wrong. He has won a battle with Satan, and that is the greatest victory that any of us can win.
"Thy servant slew both the lion and the bear: and this uncircumcised Philistine shall be as one of them, seeing he hath defied the armies of the living God." 1 Samuel 17:36
One of the greatest soldiers who ever lived was David. He was so strong that he could break a bow of steel with his arms, and he was so brave that he was not afraid to go and fight a giant, with nothing but a sling and a few stones. Before he became king he had been a shepherd boy. It had been his duty to lead the sheep out to the hillside every morning and stay with them all day so that no harm would come to them, and then bring them safely back home to the fold at night. One day a lion came to kill the sheep, and David stood between the lion and the sheep and killed the lion. At another time a bear got into the sheepfold. David took a club and killed him. These were the first battles that David fought, and they show what a brave boy he was, for it takes courage to stand up against a lion and a bear. After many years he had many other hard battles, with Goliath, and with the Philistines, and with the Syrians, but I am sure that none of these fights were quite so hard as those first ones with the lion and the bear. If he had let the lion or the bear conquer him, he never would have lived to fight with Goliath, and to be a great king. Every boy and girl is like King David in one way. The first battles they have to fight are with the lion and the bear. Let me tell you first about the lion. It isn't a lion in a cage such as you see when you visit a zoo. It is a lion inside of us. It is bad temper. Almost all of us have somewhere inside of us a temper that sometimes gets the better of us. You know how a lion attacks a man. He waits for his chance, and when the man isn't looking or thinking, he springs upon him. That is the way bad temper and passion come upon us. They spring upon us and get the mastery of us before we know it. If you go to the zoo, you will see a lion shut in a strong enclosure. You are not afraid of him because he is locked in behind strong bars, deep pits and strong fencing. But if a zoo keeper should leave that door open where he feeds the lion, and the lion should escape, then you would be afraid. That is the way with the lion of temper. He must be shut up and guarded day and night, so that he cannot hurt anyone. And if our tempers do sometimes get the mastery of us, we ought, as David did with that lion, to fight and overcome them. Paul said, " He that overcometh his spirit is better than he that taketh a city." Then there is the bear. We must not forget about him. David killed the bear, too. The best thing about a good little child is his gentleness. You know little bears are not gentle. They are cross and clumsy and go around making trouble wherever they are. They are very much like some little boys, who are rough and cross and ill-mannered. They used to say that an old mother bear never lets the little bear out of the den till he has been licked into shape. Someone has said that there are hosts of fathers and mothers who let their children out into the world, before they have been made to mind, and that is why they are so ill-mannered and cruel and unkind, for all the world like little bears. David's second great fight was with the bear. One of the first things that everybody ought to do is to fight and overcome his bearishness. Paul said in another place, "Be ye kind." Kindness is one of the best weapons with which to overcome bearishness. Some of the biggest, strongest men in the world have been the gentlest, because they knew how to be kind. One day Abraham Lincoln was riding with one of his friends along a road in Illinois, when he stopped, jumped down from his horse, and began to feel around in the grass under a bush. His companion said to him, ''Did you lose something, Mr. Lincoln?" ''No," he said, "I saw a little bird fall out of her nest as we passed, and I am trying to find her and put her back again." It was little acts such as this that made him so gentle. David, I imagine, killed the lion and the bear with a club. We can kill our lions and bears with kindness and gentleness.
Slow to Anger, giving people lots of time to change...
"...but if I wait long, that you may know how men ought to behave themselves in the house of God, which is the assembly of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth." 1 Timothy 3:15
Long ago the great Apostle Paul wrote a letter to his young friend, Timothy, and in that letter he told him something that I wish you would all remember. It was this, "You should to behave yourself in the house of God." Fathers and mothers, these days, have to tell their children to behave when they go to church, and I imagine that the boys of Paul's time were very much as they are today, for Paul here had to tell Timothy to behave himself when he went to church. There are a few things about the house of God we ought never to forget. The wise man, Solomon, once said, ''Keep thy foot when thou goest to the house of God." That means to walk softly and be reverent. I once saw a little girl tiptoeing past a house, and when I came to the house I saw that there were black ribbons and a wreath on that door. (A practice used in times of mourning for a death in the Victorian Era) She thought that God had been there, and she ought to go very softly. So we ought to also tread very softly and reverently when we enter the church. It is God's house. Then when we go inside the church, we ought to offer up a little prayer. When you go to somebody's house and he comes to the door you always speak to him, don't you? It would not be very polite to go into someone's house without speaking to him. So when we come into God's house we must speak to Him in prayer. Then all the time we are in the church, we must try to think about God and the things that we hear. Sometimes when we are talking to someone, we know he is thinking about something else all the time. This is very rude and we are likely to feel hurt. But it is what many people do when they come into God's house, where He is being worshiped. They spend the whole time thinking about other things than the service. I don't wonder, do you, that God is hurt and angry. God wants us when we come into His house to think about Him. And there is one other thing that we must do in God's house. We must ask God to forgive our sins. There is a story about a fairy who went up to the gate of heaven and was not allowed to enter. The angel said, " If you will bring the gift that is dearest to heaven, then you can come in." So the fairy flew back as fast as she could to the earth and found the most lovely and fragrant flower that there was on the earth, and brought it, but the gate was shut. Again she flew back to the earth, and this time she brought a drop of blood from a young hero, who had just died for his country; but the gate was shut still. The third time she went to the earth, and while she was wandering around, she saw a wicked old man stopping at a fountain to give his horse a drink. Just then the man saw a little child kneeling down to say his little evening prayer. When the bad man saw that, all his wicked life arose in his memory and he was sorry, and he, too, knelt and prayed, and as he prayed he wept. And the fairy, who had seen it all, caught one of those tears of repentance and flew up to heaven with it, and the gate was open, and she went in. There is nothing that is so dear to the Lord as the repentance of His children. That is what makes Jesus, and the Bible, and the church so dear to us. They show us how to repent so that Heaven's gate may open wide for us. S. N. Hutchison
"Put on all of God’s armor so that you will be able to stand firm against all strategies of the devil.'' Ephesians 6:11
Do you know what many of the Lord's disciples did for a living? They were fishermen. Jesus sometimes went with them on their fishing trips and He fished, too. In those days, just as now, there were two ways to fish. Sometimes they used a net and caught a great many at once. One night the disciples went out and fished till almost morning and didn't catch a thing. It was time to go home and they had no fish to carry to the market and sell, so that they could have money to buy food and clothes for their families. Just then Jesus came along the shore. He told them to cast the net on the other side of the ship. They did as He told them, and caught so many fish that there was not room for them all in the boat. Then they used to fish with a hook and line as we do. Once Jesus and Peter needed a little money to pay their taxes. They were very poor men, and when the tax collector came around they didn't have enough to pay him. Jesus told Peter to take his rod and line, and go to the lake, and to look in the mouth of the first fish that he caught. Scarcely had Peter dropped the bait in the water when he had a fine bite and hooked a big fish. He was so excited getting that fish to land, that I imagine he forgot for the moment what Jesus had sent him for, but when he opened the mouth of the fish to take the hook out, there was the money, just enough to pay the tax for Jesus and for him. When Jesus asked the disciples to follow Him, He told them that they were going to be fishers of men. Instead of catching fish and bringing them to market, they were to find men and bring them to Jesus. That is just what the church is doing. We are trying to be fishers of men. Sometimes we bring a large number at once as the fishermen do when they use the net, but mostly it is like using the hook and line: they come one by one. One of the first things necessary to fish successfully is to have some bait. God has given us the bait to use when we fish for men: good deeds, and loving words, and the Bible and prayer and the church and Sunday school! These are all baits which we can use in bringing others to Jesus. Satan is a fisherman, too. A great man once said that Satan is the ape of God. Whatever God does, he tries to do for an evil purpose. He uses bait, and he is trying every day to catch boys and girls. One bait that Satan uses is play. Play is a fine thing. Children must have play. But there are some games and amusements that are baits which Satan has fixed up to catch them with. We should be very careful in our recreation and play that we are not led into evil. Then there are our books. We could not do without our books. They are necessary to us. We learn from them every day, and hey give us pleasure and profit. But there are some books that Satan is using as bait to get men and women and boys and girls. Be- fore we read a book we ought to be sure that we know just what kind of a book it is, we ought to look and see that Satan's hook isn't sticking in it somewhere. Then there are our companions. Everybody loves good company. We would not be happy if we did not have some companions. Old Satan knows this and he tries to catch us and make us do evil, by means of bad company. There was once an old fish, very wise, who said to one of the young fish, " Before you bite anything go all around it and see that there is no hook sticking into it anywhere." Money is another of Satan's baits. There was a bad criminal once who confessed that his evil life had started when he was very young. He had been employed as an office-boy. Someone left a quarter lying on a desk, and went away and forgot about it. Satan came and tempted that boy to steal the money. He took it. That was the be- ginning of a life of evil. Satan used that money as the bait to catch him. When we catch a fish on the hook he hasn't much chance to get away. If Satan gets us with his bait we will have a hard time to escape. So let us all be very careful. S. N. Hutchison
Description of The Coloring Page: cross shaped cake, celebrate your Confirmation or Easter!. food, icing, roses, coloring page by kathy grimm
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When my father comes home in the evening from work. Then I will get up on his knee, And tell him how many nice lessons I learn, And show him how good I can be.
He shall hear what number I know how to count; I'll tell him what words I can spell; And if I can learn something new every day, I hope soon to read very well.
I'll repeat to him all the good verses I know, And tell him how kind we must be That we never must hurt little creatures at all And he will be glad, and love me.
I'll tell him we always must try to please God, And never be cruel or rude; For God is the Father of all living things. He cares for and blesses the good.
"You are my friends if you do what I command you."—John 15:14
What a friendly world this is! Sometimes we think it is a hard, cruel, selfish world, but it is not. It is a friendly world, full of friendly folk, who are looking around for love and friendship and happiness. The world is just like a mirror. It reflects our moods. We ourselves make the image that we see in the glass. There is a little lake I know, lying in the woods far up in the Canadian wilderness, and there you hear the echo of every noise you make. If you are rowing a boat, you think you hear someone else keeping stroke with you. If you sing, you hear some one else singing. If you shout and scold the fish that has gotten away from you, some one else scolds and talks loud. That is just the way with the world. We live in a sort of echo-world and as we speak and think and act, so we are answered back. One very hot summer day I was in the city of Cleveland. It was so hot that people were cross and I noticed a sign at the hotel desk which read, “Keep your temper, no one here wants it.” It was a wise word to tired and irritable travelers. The city was filled with delegates from all over the country, who were attending a convention, and the streets were thronged. In that hot and hurried city I came on three friendly things. The first was a little kitten, asleep behind the window of a barber shop. It was a little grey kitten, with little spots of white on each foot, on its nose and at the end of its tail. It was lying in the sun, asleep with its head resting on one of its front feet, just like a little child lying asleep with its arm under its head, and its hand over its eyes. It was very pretty and a lot of people gathered in front of the window and smiled and talked together about the little kitten with its head pillowed on its arm, as it were. I walked up to the public square and saw a young woman standing in the midst of about a hundred pigeons. They were perched on her head, her shoulders, and were eating some grain out of her hands and from the ground near by. She had come there to feed them because she loved them and they were unafraid. Then, best of all, I came upon a fine “black beauty” police horse. There was no policeman to be seen, so there was nothing to fear. The horse was standing with his front feet away up on the sidewalk, as if looking in on the turtles and alligators playing in the city fountain. But that was not what he was doing. I soon found that out. He was a friendly horse and wanted to talk to the folks as they passed. Old ladies came and patted his nose. Old men came and scratched his forehead. He seemed to like that. Little children came and looked into his big open eyes. Girls came and pulled his ears, and a big boy after putting his arm around his neck and whispering something in his ear put his hand in his pocket and pulled out a beautiful red apple and Mr. Black Beauty said “Thank you” and in two bites the apple was gone. Yes, this is a friendly world. But it is our own friendliness that makes it friendly. We get just what we give. Jesus came to make the world a friendly place. He spoke of the lilies of the field, and the birds of the air. He took the little children on His knee and was kind to all, to the poor, the blind, the sick, the sinful. To be like Jesus, we too must live the friendly life. And the laws of the friendly life are given in these simple but great words of Jesus:
“Blessed are the poor in spirit: “Blessed are they that mourn: “Blessed are the meek: “Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness. “Blessed are the merciful: “Blessed are the pure in heart: “Blessed are the peacemakers."
Little acts of kindness, Trifling though they are, How they serve to brighten This dark world of care! Little acts of kindness, Oh, how potent they, To dispel the shadows Of life's cloudy day.
Little acts of kindness, How they cheer the heart! What a world of gladness Will a smile impart! How a gentle accent Calms the troubled soul. When the waves of passion O'er it wildly roll!
You may have around you Sunshine, if you will, Or a host of shadows. Gloomy, - dreary, - chill. If you want the sunshine, Smile, though sad at heart; To the poor and needy Kindly aid impart.
To the soul-despairing Breathe a hopeful word; From your lips be only Tones of kindness heard. Ever give for anger. Love and tenderness; And, in blessing others. You yourself will bless.
Little acts of kindness, Nothing do they cost; Yet when they are wanting, Life's best charm is lost. Little acts of kindness, Richest gems of earth; Though they seem but trifles, Priceless is their worth.
