August 1
God knows our possibilities
“And Moses said unto God, Who am I, that I should go unto Pharaoh, and that I should bring forth the children of Israel out of Egypt?” (Exod. 3:11).
“Oh my Lord, wherewith shall I save Israel? Behold, my family is poor in Manasseh, and I am the least in my father’s house” (Judges 6:15).
“I cannot speak: for I am a child. But the Lord said unto me, Say not, I am a child” (Jer. 1:6-7).
Do we not come to feel how almost absolutely worthless are men’s descriptions of their own impossibilities. I used to be imposed on by such statements. When a man said any of these things about himself, it seemed as if it might be true, as if here might be a man in whom this one capacity of manhood had been left out. But so constantly the flowers have broken out of such unlikely soils, so often the darkest heavens have burst forth in unexpected stars, that it has come to seem as if no man’s assertion of his own deficiency were trustworthy. “God knew things of him that he did not know of himself,” we say when some new life opens upon a man who thought he had exhausted his capacity of living. Let us expect surprise out of the bosom of a life which God made, and which you whom He has set to live in it only half realize—as a tenant who came but yesterday into a palace only half knows the mystery and richness of the great house where he has been sent to live.
—Phillips Brooks.