June 6

Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God. — Rev 3:12

In whom ye also are builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit. — Eph 2:22

None the place ordained refuseth,
They are one, and they are all,
Living stones, the Builder chooseth
For the courses of His wall.
—JEAN INGELOW.

Slowly, through all the universe, that temple of God is being built. Wherever, in any world, a soul, by free-willed obedience, catches the fire of God’s likeness, it is set into the growing walls, a living stone. When, in your hard fight, in your tiresome drudgery, or in your terrible temptation, you catch the purpose of your being, and give yourself to God, and so give Him the chance to give Himself to you, your life, a living stone, is taken up and set into that growing wall. Wherever souls are being tried and ripened, in whatever commonplace and homely ways;—there God is hewing out the pillars for His temple. Oh, if the stone can only have some vision of the temple of which it is to be a part forever, what patience must fill it as it feels the blows of the hammer, and knows that success for it is simply to let itself be wrought into what shape the Master wills. —PHILLIPS BROOKS.