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   Daily Guideposts Devotions of Faith
   Devotion for Sunday , July 08, 2012
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Selection Taken From:
Daily Guideposts: 365 Spirit-Lifting Devotions of Faith

Enjoy an inspirational devotion each day of the year from your favorite Daily Guideposts authors! With insight, transparency, and authenticity, these reflections explore what it means to live a godly life of purpose. Each meditation relates faith to practical everyday life and includes a short Bible verse and a brief prayer. Also features scriptural and topical indexes. 384 pages, hardcover published from Guideposts, Copyright 2012.

July 8

Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. - Galatians 6:9 (NIV)

Words from the Sea, Day 4: Persistence

It was warm enough this afternoon to pull off my shoes and go wading—gingerly. I hadn’t gone barefoot in a long time, and stones and pebbles were hard to see in the swirling water. Every time I stepped on one, it hurt. Afterward I sat on the sand, letting my feet dry, watching the gentle rush and retreat of the waves, listening to the rattle of stones in the surf. Those stones, I thought, were like the hard, hurting things in my life: the job that wouldn’t go right no matter how long I worked at it; the relationship that remained broken no matter what I did.

There’s something mesmerizing about waves. Instead of getting up, I nestled deeper into the soft sand, hypnotized by the water’s motion. Pressing forward and withdrawing, advancing and retiring, endlessly dragging the stones back and forth; all day, all night, through years and centuries, rolling the stones over and over. Making sand.

Of course! It was this ceaseless advance and retreat of the ocean, wave after wave, never stopping, never giving up, that had turned hard stones into the yielding sand where I sat. I stood up and started back to the house...to the waiting task, to one more effort at reaching out.

Whatever job confronts me, Father, let the waves
remind me that quitting is the only sure way to fail.
—Elizabeth Sherrill

>Daily Guideposts: Spirit-Lifting Devotions of Faith is copyright © 2012 by Guideposts. All rights reserved.

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