The Week in Words

My friend, Barbara, hosts The Week in Words every Monday on her blog, Stray Thoughts:

Welcome to The Week In Words, where we share quotes from the last week’s reading. If something you read this past week  inspired you, caused you to laugh, cry, think, dream, or just resonated with you in some way, please share it with us. The source can be a book, newspaper, blog, Facebook — anything that you read.


This from a friend's Facebook status this morning:

"If you think about it, the Earth is bipolar. This may explain a lot."

Although I didn't read this one from someone else last week, I did have the chance to share one of my favorite quotes in a blog comment. I try to remember this as I work at all the seemingly small things I do each week:

"I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble." ~~ Helen Keller

From the e-book Personal Friendships of Jesus by J.R. Miller, p.206:

"We should learn from Jesus that the essential quality in the heart of friendship is not the desire to have friends, but the desire to be a friend: not to get good and help from others, but to impart blessing to others. Many of the sighings for friendship which we have are merely selfish longings, --a desire for happiness, for pleasure, for the gratification of the heart, which friends would bring. If the desire were to be a friend, to do others good, to serve and to give help, it would be a far more Christlike longing, and would transform the life and character."

Finally, the quote that spoke most to me last week. I have a tendency to either look to the past and "what if" everything or look to the future thinking life will be better when some event or other has come to pass. I read this Saturday morning; it's from F.B. Meyer's devotional for May 15:

"Let us not repine for the past, or strain after the future. We often forget the rare benefits of the present moment, because we suppose that there is something more absolutely satisfying ahead. Here and now God is forgiving, healing, redeeming, crowning, satisfying, and executing righteous acts. Live in the present! Live in God, the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever! It is enough."

Want to share something you read last week that had an impact on you? Join in The Week in Words!