When we bless God for mercies, we usually prolong them. When we bless God for miseries, we usually end them. Praise is the honey of life which a devout heart extracts from every bloom of providence and grace.
Interpretation
Expressing gratitude for both good and bad experiences can enhance our lives and lead to personal growth.
In this quote, Charles Spurgeon highlights the importance of blessing God for both blessings and trials in life. He suggests that when we express gratitude for our mercies, we invite more of them, and when we bless God for our miseries, we find a way to transcend them. The metaphor of praise being the 'honey of life' emphasizes how a grateful heart can extract sweetness from life's experiences, thus enriching our existence through both providence and grace.
In practice
During a speech about overcoming challenges, you might say this quote to encourage gratitude.
Amusement should be used to do us good “like a medicine”: it must never be used as the food of the man...Many have had all holy thoughts and gracious resolutions stamped out by perpetual trifling. Pleasure so called is the murderer of thought. This is the age of excessive amusement: everybody craves for it, like a babe for its rattle.
When you see no present advantage, walk by faith and not by sight. Do God the honor to trust Him when it comes to matters of loss for the sake of principle.
It is far easier to fight with sin in public than to pray against it in private.
You will never glory in God till first of all God has killed your glorying in yourself.
After faith comes repentance, or, rather, repentance is faith's twin brother and is born at the same time.
["All the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth unto such as keep his covenant."] The original Hebrew word that has been translated "paths" means "well-worn roads' or "wheel tracks," such ruts as wagons make when they go down our green roads in wet weather and sink in up to the axles. God's ways are at times like heavy wagon tracks that cut deep into our souls, yet all of them are merciful.
Islam is a vibrant faith. Millions of our fellow citizens are Muslim. We respect the faith. We honor its traditions. Our enemy does not. Our enemy doesn't follow the great traditions of Islam. They've hijacked a great religion.
The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose. An evil soul producing holy witness Is like a villain with a smiling cheek, A goodly apple rotten at the heart. O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath!
Never does one feel oneself so utterly helpless as in trying to speak comfort for great bereavement.
Beware of the man who does not return your blow: he neither forgives you nor allows you to forgive yourself.
No matter how much we try to run away from this thirst for the answer to life, for the meaning of life, the intensity only gets stronger and stronger. We cannot escape these spiritual hungers.
Qu'ils mangent de la brioche. Let them eat cake. On being told that her people had no bread. Attributed to Marie-Antoinette, but remark is much older. Rousseau refers in his Confessions, 1740, to a similar remark, as a well-known saying. Others attribute the remark to the wife of Louis XIV.
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