Psalms 42:5

During a truce in the Civil War in America, when the hostile armies sat sullenly facing each other with a field between them, a little brown bird rose suddenly from the long grass and darted skyward.

There, a mere speck in the blue, it poured forth its liquid music of which the lark alone has the secret.

Often our feelings and emotions are mistakenly substituted for faith.

Pleasurable emotions and deep, satisfying experiences are part of the Christian life, but they are not the essence of it. Trials, conflicts, battles, and testings lie along the way and are to be counted not as misfortunes but rather as part of our necessary discipline.