Gentle and Quiet Spirit

I've been on a bit of an unintentional blogging break. Nothing bad's going on; but life's just seemed so busy lately...moreso than usual. I've been thinking about how to simplify. Surely, I keep thinking, there are some things that I can change to slow down the pace a little. I suspect, though, that this is just the pace of life and I need to deal with it better.

This morning I was working through my bible study and finishing up the chapter on 'Excellence: Made Precious by a Gentle and Quiet Spirit'. This study has been so wonderful and has really caused me to examine myself and encouraged me to cultivate this quality. However, I may need to re-read this chapter beginning tomorrow! I think I frowned a lot yesterday and my kids didn't see much gentleness and quietness. I felt a bit stressed and hurried and I know it showed. Praise God that His mercies are new today! Lamentations 3:22-23

I have noticed that wherever there has been a faithful following of the Lord in a consecrated soul, several things have, sooner or later, inevitably followed. Meekness and quietness of spirit become in time the characteristics of the daily life. A submissive acceptance of the will of God, as it comes in the hourly events of each day, is manifested; pliability in the hands of God to do or to suffer all the good pleasure of His will; sweetness under provocation; calmness in the midst of turmoil and bustle; a yielding to the wishes of others, and an insensibility to slights and affronts; absence of worry or anxiety; deliverance from care and fear, --all these, and many other similar graces, are invariably founds to be the natural outward development of the inward life which is hid with Christ in God.
--Hannah Whitall Smith