1) My practice of morning devotional fell away in August when the kitchen renovation began. Aside from the workmen arriving every day at 7, the entire house was in chaos*. Yesterday Mother came into my mind a lot; morning devotional was very much her daily routine. And since I was unable to get back to sleep after 4:20 AM, this was the right day to resume my own devotional.
1a) I must say, I slept very heavily for at least four hours. How beautiful!
2) I practice bibliomancy; there’s a lesson you may not know you need when you open up a book. Today Mother’s Bible came open at Corinthians II, chapter 1. And Mother had bracketed this verse with the date 3/23/75: “Who comforts us in all our roubles, so that we also may be able to comfort those who are in any trouble, by the very comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.”
2a) But the verse that spoke to me was 1:12: “For our joy is this, the testimony of our conscience, in sincerity and in purity with the grace of God, we have conducted ourselves in this world, and not through the wisdom of the flesh; and above all, we have so dealt with you.”
3) And then Gracián’s The Art of Worldly Wisdom #159, which begins “Know how to suffer fools.” Gurrrrllll, have we had to suffer a fool these last four years, and those who revere him! But it’s a complicated aphorism, including “The wise are the least tolerant, for learning has diminished their patience,” and “. . . the person who does not know how to put up with others should retire into himself, if indeed he can suffer even himself.”
*It still is.