Life does not always deal us a favorable hand. Sometimes, there is illness, or we find ourselves unemployed, or death lays a cold and unwelcome hand upon loved ones. Our faith does not fail, of course, but the going gets harder than it was. Unexpected reverses have a way of showing up at the most inopportune times; and occasionally we may be tempted to say within ourselves, "What's the use?"

No doubt such emotions come to all of us now and then; but the Lord will help us to keep on keeping on. The Christian life was never intended to be a long string of unlimited victories. The admonition for Christians in the sacred text says, "Having put on the WHOLE ARMOR OF GOD, and having done all, to STAND." We are not instructed to defeat all of our enemies, not even to solve all of our problems, but to "STAND." Ours is not a task of rounding up all of God's sheep and declaring war on the wolves. It all turns on the question of our ability "to stay in there" through thick or thin, through sorrows and wonderful joys, in sickness and in health, in poverty or affluence, in success or failure, in profit or loss.

He who called us into the kingdom of His Son will complete the good work which he began In us. Nothing is required of any of us that we cannot perform. But we should always remember that the promise is certified when life's probation is over, or when the Lord shall come, ever remembering that the Voice from heaven is pleading with us, "Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee the crown of life that fadeth not away." It is in this steadfast continuity that we shall win the prize.

Think of how it was with Jesus. Forsaken by His disciples, denied by the leader of the apostles, betrayed by one of them, rejected by the Chosen People, facing a cruel death on Calvary. Our Holy Savior took every sorrow life could bring him and hurled the eternal challenge in the face of all of it: "Be of good cheer, I have overcome the world." Of course, this is precisely the ability every Christian so desperately needs. Where could there be a better source of such power for every one of us that in the Holy One who gave Himself up to death for us and loosed us from our sins in His blood?
Burton Coffman

Feed your faith, starve your doubts.
Formula for failure: try to please everybody.
Silence is the best and surest way to hide ignorance.