Morning Briefings

God is great, but sometimes life ain’t good, and when I pray it doesn’t always turn out like it should, but I do it anyway. I do it anyway.

– Martina McBride, Anyway from
Wake Up Laughing

The will of God is not to send us the disaster, but to send us the disaster to overcome.

–
Rabbi Kushner

You may be exhausted with work, you may even kill yourself but unless your work is interwoven with love, it is useless. To work without love is slavery.

– Mother Teresa
Everything Starts from Prayer: Mother Teresa’s Meditations on Spiritual Life for People of All Faiths

A small person with small ideas won’t lead us to new levels of excellence or an improved quality of life. There are a hundred times more small people than big people in the world. Wherever they are, they do their best to shoot down people with big visions, big dreams and big perspectives. This is sad, because all of us, including the small people, ultimately benefit from the big ideas.

– Kent M. Keith
Anyway–The Paradoxical Commandments: Finding Personal Meaning in a Crazy World

Jesus went into the desert an unknown young carpenter from Nazareth, with thirty years of hidden life behind him. After the desert he returned to Galilee, and started to preach. Quickly he became a public figure, but he loved to withdraw to desert or mountain to recharge his energies by prayer. He moved forward like any of us, with no sure knowledge of what was to happen to him.

–
Sacred Space

Retired Infantryman Brendan Marrocco spoke at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore on Tuesday, the day he was to be discharged. Mr. Marrocco received a two-arm transplant after losing all four limbs in a 2009 bomb attack in Iraq. The surgery has been performed in the U.S. only seven times.

–
The Wall Street Journal photo caption, January 30, 2013

All hard work brings a profit, but mere talk leads only to poverty.

– Proverbs 14:23 as referenced in
God’s Words for Life

The best ideas will die on the vine if cash flows are insufficient to allow it to reach fruition.

– David R. Henderson & Charles L. Hooper
Making Great Decisions in Business and Life

Two major airports reopened and the floor of the New York Stock Exchange came back to life Wednesday, while across the river in New Jersey, National Guardsmen rushed to rescue flood victims and fires still raged two days after Superstorm Sandy.

– Adam Geller, AP
philly.com

When life knocks you to your knees, and it will, why, get up! If it knocks you to your knees again, as it will, well, isn’t that the best position from which to pray?

– Ethel Barrymore