Is your calling a high calling? Has it elevated your heart and set it on heavenly things? Has it lifted your hopes, your tastes, your desires? If your calling is only from people, then you haven’t been called at all. Is your calling from God? Is it a call to Heaven as well as from Heaven? Unless you

feel like a stranger here on earth and see Heaven as your true home, you haven’t been called with a heavenly calling. Those who have, declare that they look for a city with foundations, whose builder and maker is God. Is your calling holy, high, and heavenly? Then, dear friend, you have been called by God, because that’s the kind of calling He gives His people.

The harsh breath of winter creates many beauties. Look at how the dead leaves are frosted with silver or delicately decorated as if with precious metal. Broken twigs and rotten branches are transformed into silver rods and bars by frost’s magical touch.

When the winter of suffering is upon us, even our most ordinary blessings become invaluable, and forgotten words of comfort grow precious to our souls. So even sorrow has its own beauty.