personal development on Duty

No duty is more urgent than that of returning thanks.

Morality or duty . . . never yet made a man happy in himself or dear to others.

Our duty, as men and women, is to proceed as if limits to our ability did not exist. We are collaborators in creation.

Ability involves responsibility; power, to its last particle, is duty.

Duty is ours; results are God’s.

It must be remembered that life consists not of a series of illustrious actions, or elegant enjoyments; the greater part of our time passes in compliance with necessities, in the performance of daily ...

Make it a point to do something every day that you don’t want to do. This is the golden rule for acquiring the habit of doing your duty without pain.

"The one secret of life and development, is not to devise and plan . . . but to do every moment’s duty aright . . . and let come—not what will, for there is no such thing—but what the eternal Tho...

The best preparation for the future is the present well seen to, and the last duty done.

We have now sunk to a depth at which restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men.

It is not by accident that in Greek one and the same noun (charis) does duty for both ‘grace’ and ‘gratitude.’

Brother Lawrence, a 16th-century Carmelite monk, spent his days scrubbing pots and mending shoes. Largely uneducated, he filled his free time writing letters and notes that, after his death, friends g...

Is God really “in” all things? And would it matter if the answer was “yes” or “no”? How? Jean-Pierre de Caussade was an 18th century French Jesuit preacher, theologian, and spiritual director who t...

Compassionate God—In Christ, you enter our condition; you experience our sorrow and our joy ... and redeem them. By Your Holy Spirit, you carry us along: in crisis and celebration, in despair and acco...

O God, the Father of the forsaken, the help of the weak, the supplier of the needy, you have distributed and proportioned your gifts to body and soul, in such sort that all may acknowledge and perform...

O God, we thank you that you have not treated us as we deserve. We thank you that, though you are Creator, Judge and King, you are also Father, so that, though we are wandering children, there is alw...

Saul's Confident Error Last week, we considered Abram and the way that God may send us out on a journey, waiting to see his will without knowing the destination.  Today we move forward to Saul on...

Sometimes moments of forgiveness and friendship come from unexpected places. In 2018, the comedian Pete Davidson appeared on the “Weekend Update” segment of Saturday Night Live (SNL). Davidson made a ...

During his time as commander in the Roman army, Caesar Augustus (who would become the first Roman Emperor) had to relieve a soldier from duty for bad behavior. The man begged to remain in military ser...

If love is the soul of Christian existence, it must be at the heart of every other Christian virtue. Thus, for example, justice without love is legalism; faith without love is ideology; hope without l...

Here’s a story about tithing - giving away 10% of one’s income, from of all places, Forbes magazine. In the article, the writer tells the story of Greg Gianforte, the founder, chairman and CEO of Rig...

In Thanks! I wrote that legendary investor and philanthropist Sir John Templeton had posed the question, “How can we get six billion people around the world to practice gratitude?” Not long after Sir ...

Sometimes moments of forgiveness and friendship come from unexpected places. In 2018, the comedian Pete Davidson appeared on the “Weekend Update” segment of Saturday Night Live (SNL). Davidson made a ...

What are we hear for in the first place? The fundamental answer…is that we we’re “here for” is to become genuine human beings, reflecting the God in whose image we’re made, and doing so in worship on ...

He that takes truth for his guide, and duty for his end, may safely trust to God's providence to lead him aright.

The Bible must be the invention either of good men or angels, bad men or devils, or of God. However, it was not written by good men, because good men would not tell lies by saying 'Thus saith the ...

What is kindness, then? What sort of behavior do we have in mind when we say that someone has been kind to us or to others? I think the essence of kindness is being thoughtful for others more than for...

Biblical scholar Nahum Sarna (in On the Book of Psalms) points out that the mediation mentioned in Psalm 1 (The man who “meditates on [God’s] law day and night”) is “not engaged in meditation and cont...

All moral obligation resolves itself into the obligation of conformity to the will of God.

Love always involves responsibility, and love always involves sacrifice. And we do not really love Christ unless we are prepared to face His task and to take up His Cross.