Each day....

The following passage I quoted from a very brilliant book from Archbishop Anthony Bloom "Beginning to Pray". It is very inspiring and touching me personally, so I would like to share it with you.

This day is blessed by God, and it is God's own and let us go into it. You walk in this day as God's own messenger; whomever you meet, you meet in God's own way. You are there to be the presence of the Lord God, the presence of Christ, presence of the Spirit, the presence of the Gospel -- This is your function in this particular day. God has never said that if you walk into a situation in His own Name, He will be crucified and you will be the risen one. You must be prepared to walk into situations, one after the other, in God's Name, to walk as the Son of God has done: in humiliation and humility, in truth and ready to be persecuted and so forth. Usually what we expect when we fulfill God's commandments is to see a marvelous result at once -- we read of that at times in the life of the saints. When, for instance when someone hits on one cheek, we turn the other one, although we don't expect to be hit at all, but we expect to see the other people say " What-- such a humility" -- you get your rewards and he gets the salvation of his soul. It does not work that way. You must pay the cost and very often you get hit hard. What matters is that you are prepared for that. As to the day, if you accept that today was blessed of God, chosen by God with His own hand, then every person you meet is a gift of God, every circumstance you will meet is a gift of God, whether it is bitter or sweet, whether you like or dislike it. It is God's own gift to you and if you take it that way, then you can face any situation. But then you must face it with the readiness that anything may happen, whether you enjoy it or not, and if you walk in the name of the Lord through a day which has come fresh and anew out of His own Hands and has been blessed for you to live with it, then you can make prayer and life really like two sides of one coin. You act and pray in one breath as it were, because all situations that follow one another require God's blessing.

Archbishop Anthony Bloom, Beginning to Pray, pp. 76-77.