We went to labor in the fields, my wife and I, hand in hand. Scarcely were we conscious of the fatigues of the day. Heaven always blessed our toil.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
When you cease from labour, fill up your time in reading, meditation, and prayer: and while your hands are labouring, let your heart be employed, as much as possible, in divine thoughts.
Thou art my single day, God lends to leaven What were all earth else, with a feel of heaven.
Out of my discomforts, which were small enough, grew one thing for which I have all my life been grateful, the formation of fixed habits of work.
Work is the order of the day, just as it was at one time, with our first starts and our best efforts. Do you remember? Therein lies its delight. It brings back the forgotten; one's stores of energy, seemingly exhausted, come back to life.
I was, by divine grace, enabled to bring all my sins and all my sorrows and lay them at the feet of Jesus, and to receive the blessed assurance that He had accepted me, all sinful and polluted as I was.
Think of our physical sustenance. It is truly heaven-sent. The necessities of air, food, and water all come to us as gifts from a loving Heavenly Father.
I looked at my hands to see if I was the same person. There was such a glory over everything. The sun came up like gold through the trees, and I felt like I was in heaven.
As for plenty, we had not only for necessity, conveniency and decency, but for delight and pleasure to superfluity.
I plainly felt that, had God given me such a retirement with the companion I desired, I should have forgotten the work for which I was born and have set up my rest in this world.
O king! I was but a man like others, asleep upon my couch, when lo, the breezes of the All-Glorious were wafted over me, and taught me the knowledge of all that hath been. This thing is not from me, but from One Who is Almighty and All-Knowing.