Readings for each day of the week
Alcoholics Anonymous, pages 86 to 88; Step Eleven, morning
Friday
On awakening let us think about the twenty-four hours ahead. We consider our plans for the day. Before we begin, we ask God to direct our thinking, especially asking that it be divorced from self-pity, dishonest or self-seeking motives. Under these conditions we can employ our mental faculties with assurance, for after all God gave us brains to use. Our thought-life will be placed on a much higher plane when our thinking is cleared of wrong motives.
Saturday
In thinking about our day we may face indecision. We may not be able to determine which course to take. Here we ask God for inspiration, an intuitive thought or a decision. We relax and take it easy. We don’t struggle. We are often surprised how the right answers come after we have tried this for a while. What used to be the hunch or the occasional inspiration gradually becomes a working part of the mind. Being still inexperienced and having just made conscious contact with God, it is not probable that we are going to be inspired at all times. We might pay for this presumption in all sorts of absurd actions and ideas. Nevertheless, we find that our thinking will, as time passes, be more and more on the plane of inspiration. We come to rely upon it.
Sunday
We usually conclude the period of meditation with a prayer that we be shown all through the day what our next step is to be, that we be given whatever we need to take care of such problems. We ask especially for freedom from self-will, and are careful to make no request for ourselves only. We may ask for ourselves, however, if others will be helped. We are careful never to pray for our own selfish ends. Many of us have wasted a lot of time doing that and it doesn’t work. You can easily see why.
Monday
If circumstances warrant, we ask our wives or friends to join us in morning meditation. If we belong to a religious denomination which requires a definite morning devotion, we attend to that also. If not members of religious bodies, we sometimes select and memorize a few set prayers which emphasize the principles we have been discussing.
Tuesday
There are many helpful books also. Suggestions about these may be obtained from one’s priest, minister, or rabbi. Be quick to see where religious people are right. Make use of what they offer.
Wednesday
As we go through the day we pause, when agitated or doubtful, and ask for the right thought or action. We constantly remind ourselves we are no longer running the show, humbly saying to ourselves many times each day “Thy will be done.” We are then in much less danger of excitement, fear, anger, worry, self-pity, or foolish decisions.
Thursday
We become much more efficient. We do not tire so easily, for we are not burning up energy foolishly as we did when we were trying to arrange life to suit ourselves.
It works—it really does.
We alcoholics are undisciplined. So we let God discipline us in the simple way we have just outlined.
Calendar readings
01 January 2026
Don’t tell God how big your problems are. Tell your problems how big God is.
Anonymous
02 January 2026
All I can say is that it’s for the best. And couldn’t possibly get any better. Amen.
Fiddler on the Roof
03 January 2026
His special triumph is that [during the expedition] he seldom let his emotional state take over, and then only momentarily. Whether he was high or low, his emotional state played no role in daily decision-making for two and a half years.
Stephen E. Ambrose, Undaunted Courage, on the subject of Meriwether Lewis
04 January 2026
Definitions of alcoholics are many and varied. For brevity we think of an alcoholic as one whose life has become unmanageable to any degree due to the use of alcohol.
Baltimore AA Preamble
05 January 2026
We profess no curative powers but have formulated a plan to arrest alcoholism.
Baltimore AA Preamble
06 January 2026
From the vast experience of our many members we have learned that successful membership demands total abstinence. Attempts at controlled drinking by the alcoholic inevitably fail.
Baltimore AA Preamble
07 January 2026
The membership requirement demands only a sincere desire on the part of the applicant to maintain total abstinence.
Baltimore AA Preamble
08 January 2026
Alcoholics Anonymous does not perform miracles, believing that such power rests only in God.
Baltimore AA Preamble
09 January 2026
We adhere to no particular creed or religion. We do believe, however, that an appeal for help to one’s own interpretation of a Higher Power, or God, is indispensable to a satisfactory adjustment to life’s problems.
Baltimore AA Preamble
10 January 2026
We attempt to follow a program of recovery which has for its chief objectives sobriety for ourselves; help for other alcoholics who desire it; amends for past wrongs; humility; honesty; tolerance; and spiritual growth.
Baltimore AA Preamble
11 January 2026
The mystic, the visionary, walking the beach on a fine night, stirring a puddle, looking at a stone, asking themselves, “What am I,” “What is this?” had suddenly an answer vouchsafed them: (they could not say what it was) so that they were warm in the frost and had comfort in the desert.
Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse
12 January 2026
There are parts of a ship which taken by themselves would sink. The engine would sink. The propeller would sink. But when the parts of a ship are built together, they float.
Ralph W. Sockman
13 January 2026
You know Rosalind. She’s never so righteous as when she is in the wrong.
Violet Crawley in Downton Abbey, S03E03
14 January 2026
Stupidity and rage make a fatal combination.
Alice Thomas Ellis, Animal Crackers (article in The Spectator in the 1980s)
15 January 2026
Lady Rosamund Painswick: I’m sorry, Mama, but you know me. I have to say what I think.
Violet Crawley: Why? Nobody else does.
Downton Abbey
16 January 2026
Strike while the iron is cold.
Anonymous
17 January 2026
... but that all our doings may be ordered by thy governance, to do always that is righteous in thy sight ...
The Book of Common Prayer, 1662, The Third Collect, for Grace
18 January 2026
A man has no more character than he can command in a time of crisis.
Ralph W. Sockman
19 January 2026
TRUST stands for ‘Try Really Using Step Three’.
Anonymous
20 January 2026
Thinking never helped anyone, Frederick. Least of all such an earnest young man as yourself.
Lady Elms, The Hour
21 January 2026
It’s not the problem that’s the problem; it’s my problem with the problem that’s the problem.
Anonymous
22 January 2026
Tevye: Do you love me?
Golde: Do I what?
Tevye: Do you love me?
Golde: Do I love you? For twenty-five years, I’ve washed your clothes, cooked your meals, cleaned your house, given you children, milked the cow. After twenty-five years, why talk about love right now? Do I love him? For twenty-five years, I’ve lived with him, fought with him, starved with him. For twenty-five years, my bed is his. If that’s not love, what is?
Fiddler on the Roof
23 January 2026
And Jesus answered and said to her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and troubled about many things. But one thing is needed.”
Luke 10
24 January 2026
... the good are like one another, friends to one another; and ... the bad, as is often said of them, are never at unity with one another or with themselves; for they are passionate and restless, and anything which is at variance and enmity with itself is not likely to be in union or harmony with any other thing.
Plato, Lysis (translation by Jowett)
25 January 2026
“Well, goodbye, Graves, and remember that your best friend is the waste-paper basket.”
Robert Graves reporting his Charterhouse headmaster’s parting words in Goodbye to All That
26 January 2026
“Dickon’s a kind lad an’ animals likes him.” Mary had never possessed an animal pet of her own and had always thought she should like one. So she began to feel a slight interest in Dickon, and, as she had never before been interested in anyone but herself, it was the dawning of a healthy sentiment.
Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden
27 January 2026
Come to [God] everyone who is carrying a heavy load, I will set that right.
C. S. Lewis, paraphrasing a passage the New Testament
28 January 2026
At that moment a very good thing was happening to her. Four good things had happened to her, in fact, since she came to Misselthwaite Manor. She had felt as if she had understood a robin and that he had understood her; she had run in the wind until her blood had grown warm; she had been healthily hungry for the first time in her life; and she had found out what it was to be sorry for someone. She was getting on.
The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
29 January 2026
“If I might have but one of her feet to kiss,” thought Cosmo, “I should be content.” Alas! he deceived himself, for passion is never content.
George MacDonald, Phantastes
30 January 2026
[In the following except, Colin is a very sickly child who has been lying in bed most of his life.]
“For sure thou wilt [walk],” he said stoutly. “Thou—thou’s got legs o’ thine own, same as other folks!”
Mary was rather frightened until she heard Colin’s answer.
“Nothing really ails them,” he said, “but they are so thin and weak. They shake so that I’m afraid to try to stand on them.”
Both Mary and Dickon drew a relieved breath.
“When thou stops bein’ afraid thou will stand on ‘em,” Dickon said with renewed cheer. “An’ thou wilt stop bein’ afraid in a bit.”
Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden
31 January 2026
When the saint says, ‘I choose God,’ he is really saying, ‘I am not going to choose any more: my happiness consists in letting God choose.’
Dom Hubert van Zeller, The Choice of God
01 February 2026
If he had ever had anyone to talk to about his secret terrors—if he had ever dared to let himself ask questions—if he had had childish companions and had not lain on his back in the huge, closed house, breathing an atmosphere heavy with the fears of people who were, most of them, ignorant and tired of him, he would have found out that most of his fright and illness was created by himself. But he had lain and thought of himself and his aches and weariness for hours and days and months and years. And now that an angry unsympathetic little girl insisted obstinately that he was not as ill as he thought he was he actually felt as if she might be speaking the truth.
Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden
02 February 2026
Eomer was silent for a moment, then he spoke.
J. R. R. Tolkien, The Two Towers
03 February 2026
Is [asking God to choose for us] a shrinking from responsibility? Is it a running away from life—with life’s decisions and crises and razor-edged loyalties? No, it is only a shrinking away from selfishness—which we have got to shrink from anyway if we would be upright men at all. It is not a running from but a running into. And once a man has fully committed himself to the choice of God, he does not have to worry overmuch about the choice which denies him the pleasure of creatures.
Dom Hubert van Zeller, The Choice of God
04 February 2026
All behaviour is an expression of the will. If you did it or failed to do it, you willed it. It’s not involuntary. But your behaviour is not who you are.
Rabbi Shais Taub (paraphrased)
05 February 2026
One of the strange things about living in the world is that it is only now and then one is quite sure one is going to live forever and ever and ever. One knows it sometimes when one gets up at the tender solemn dawn-time and goes out and stands alone and throws one’s head far back and looks up and up and watches the pale sky slowly changing and flushing and marvellous unknown things happening until the East almost makes one cry out and one’s heart stands still at the strange unchanging majesty of the rising of the sun—which has been happening every morning for thousands and thousands and thousands of years.
Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden
06 February 2026
Thought itself is constantly running, but, at any particular point in time, I’m picking whether to think about it and how long to think about it. The fact of thinking is the hardware. The content is the software. Or consider a mill: whatever grain I put in, that’s the flour I get out. If I put in barley grain, I’ll get out barley flour. Whatever I think about is whatever I’m putting in the mill; that will condition the content I will get out.
Rabbi Shais Taub (paraphrased)
07 February 2026
Don’t concern yourself with the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, because the devil will keep you very busy with the evil and you won’t have any time for the good.
Frances Hogan (paraphrased)
08 February 2026
Show me now Your way, that I may know You and that I may find grace in Your sight
Exodus 33:12
09 February 2026
[In the following except, the sickly Colin, now improving, is addressed by his doctor.]
“You are evidently better, but you must remember—”
“I don’t want to remember,” interrupted [Colin], appearing again. “When I lie by myself and remember I begin to have pains everywhere and I think of things that make me begin to scream because I hate them so. If there was a doctor anywhere who could make you forget you were ill instead of remembering it I would have him brought here.” ... “It is because my cousin makes me forget that she makes me better.”
10 February 2026
When the soul was sent down from heaven to earth, it was like being pushed out of an aeroplane with a parachute and a barely functioning radio. But if that is the mission the Almighty has sent us on, we have to carry it out.
Rabbi Shais Taub (paraphrased)
11 February 2026
Sophie, Archduchess of Austria: Forgiveness is not a feeling, Franz. It is a decision.
The Empress
[To post but not to read out:]
Vergebung ist kein Gefühl, Franz. Es ist eine Entscheidung.
12 February 2026
Where would I find enough leather to cover the entire surface of the earth? But with leather soles beneath my feet, it’s as if the whole world has been covered.
Shantideva
13 February 2026
“The sun is shining—the sun is shining. That is the Magic. The flowers are growing—the roots are stirring. That is the Magic. Being alive is the Magic—being strong is the Magic. The Magic is in me—the Magic is in me. It is in me—it is in me. It’s in every one of us. It’s in Ben Weatherstaff’s back. Magic! Magic! Come and help!”
Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden
14 February 2026
The best way to praise the Almighty is silence, because whatever you say is not enough.
Rabbi Yehoshua B. Gordon on Parshat Beshalach
15 February 2026
Self-annihilation is not a violent, destructive act. It is dropping the illusion of separateness (the ego) to become an instrument of God. Nothing of substance is destroyed: we are merely repurposed for God’s ends.
Rabbi Shais Taub (paraphrased)
16 February 2026
For what does anyone need to seek for, once God is present? On the other hand, if God is not enough for someone, what could ever be enough?
From a sermon by St Augustine
17 February 2026
The relationship between intellect and emotion is like the relationship between the parent and the child. Whatever we think about, we will start to care about.
Rabbi Shais Taub (paraphrased)
18 February 2026
“Do you believe in Magic?” asked Colin .... “I do hope you do.”
“That I do, lad,” she answered. “I never knew it by that name but what does the name matter? I warrant they call it a different name in France and a different one in Germany. The same thing as set the seeds swelling and the sun shining made you a well lad, and it’s the Good Thing. You were singing to it when I came into the garden. ... The Magic listened when you sang ... It would have listened to anything you’d have sung. It was the joy that mattered. Eh! lad, lad—what’s names to the Joy Maker,” and she gave his shoulders a quick soft pat again.
Edited from Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden
19 February 2026
Just as a snail has a shell, and the shell is also part of the snail, so the Almighty is concealed from us through nature, which is His shell. But nature is also part of the Almighty. Therefore, we should see the Almighty in every part of creation, and in every good act we perform.
Rabbi Yehoshua B. Gordon on Tanya, Chapter 21
20 February 2026
There are times you’re sitting and praying and the Almighty says: you should be out there, being an emissary, going to the ends of the earth, carrying a message. Prayer is good, but it’s limited. Action is what the Almighty wants.
Rabbi Yehoshua B. Gordon on Parshat Beshalach
21 February 2026
Next, “Blessed are the meek,” he says, “for they shall inherit the earth.” If you wish to possess the earth now, take care, or it will possess you. If you are meek, you will possess it; if you are not, you will be possessed by it. ... You will truly possess the earth when you unite yourself with Him who made both heaven and earth. Meekness means not resisting God. That means that if things go well for you, you are happy with Him rather than with yourself; and on the other hand, if things go badly, you are unhappy not with Him, but with yourself. It is an important thing that you should be pleasing to God, even if you are not pleasing to yourself; whereas if you are pleasing to yourself, you are not pleasing to God.
From a sermon by St Augustine
22 February 2026
In each century since the beginning of the world, wonderful things have been discovered. In the last century more amazing things were found out than in any century before. In this new century hundreds of things still more astounding will be brought to light. At first people refuse to believe that a strange new thing can be done, then they begin to hope it can be done, then they see it can be done—then it is done, and all the world wonders why it was not done centuries ago. One of the new things people began to find out in the last century was that thoughts—just mere thoughts—are as powerful as electric batteries—as good for one as sunlight is, or as bad for one as poison. To let a sad thought or a bad one get into your mind is as dangerous as letting a scarlet fever germ get into your body. If you let it stay there after it has got in you may never get over it as long as you live.
Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden
23 February 2026
Others can do things which affect our bodies, but no one can make us feel anything.
Ken Wapnick, Rules for Decision
24 February 2026
The Israelites, in the desert, were given manna, daily. Now, that’s a tough one. They didn’t have a fridge. They didn’t have a pantry. They didn’t have a savings account. They had to go out every day and hope that it would come again. That takes a lot of faith. The Almighty sustains each and every one of us and sustains us from heaven with what we need, and we have to have the strength of character and faith to say: If I’m OK today, I’m not going to worry about tomorrow. We have to trust the Almighty. There are lots of rules associated with the collection of manna. The Almighty was testing them: Would they follow the rules, or would they try to take matters into their own hands?
Rabbi Yehoshua B. Gordon on Parshat Beshalach
25 February 2026
There is no length to which He will not go, no depth to which He will not descend, to win the love of your heart and mine. God is always searching for us through that sense of separation that we may be experiencing. Even though God seems absent, God is never absent and is trying hard to reach us through what I like to call our sense of lostness.
Father Leo Clifford
26 February 2026
So long as Mistress Mary’s mind was full of disagreeable thoughts about her dislikes and sour opinions of people and her determination not to be pleased by or interested in anything, she was a yellow-faced, sickly, bored and wretched child. Circumstances, however, were very kind to her, though she was not at all aware of it. They began to push her about for her own good. When her mind gradually filled itself with robins, and moorland cottages crowded with children, with queer crabbed old gardeners and common little Yorkshire housemaids, with springtime and with secret gardens coming alive day by day, and also with a moor boy and his “creatures,” there was no room left for the disagreeable thoughts which affected her liver and her digestion and made her yellow and tired.
Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden
27 February 2026
Exodus 17:7: ‘He gave the place the name Masah and Merivah [“testing and contention”], because of the people’s contentiousness and because they had tested God by saying, “Is God present among us or not?”’
It is as if God were saying: I am always among you and ready to provide for all your needs, and yet you say: “Is God present among us or not?”
Rashi
28 February 2026
There is a parable of a man who put his son on his shoulders and set out on a journey. The son saw an object on the way and said, “Father, pick up this object and give it to me,” and he gave it to him; and so a second time and so a third time. They then met a man and the son asked him, “Have you seen my father?” His father then said to him, “Don’t you know where I am?!” So he threw him off his shoulders and a dog came and bit him.
Rashi on Exodus 17:8
01 March 2026
The Rebbe Maharash would say that making a living gives rise to the greatest tribulations, and these threaten to drive out awareness of the Almighty. Instead of building a relationship with the Almighty, we’re focused on making a living. The truth is that, if we get the relationship with the Almighty right, the Almighty will provide from the heavens. Just like with the manna, though, when the Israelites had to collect the manna in a basket, you need to get your basket in order, ready to receive the blessing. Then you’ll be given what you need.
Rabbit Yehoshua B. Gordon on Parshat Beshalach
02 March 2026
We needed to ask ourselves but one short question. ‘Do I now believe, or am I even willing to believe, that there is a Power greater than myself?’ As soon as a man can say that he does believe, or is willing to believe, we emphatically assure him that he is on his way. It has been repeatedly proven among us that upon this simple cornerstone a wonderfully effective spiritual structure can be built.
Chapter 4, Big Book
03 March 2026
An emissary went to see the Rebbe, worried about how he was going to handle his mission to a very hostile, difficult environment. The Rebbe asked, “if, I were going with you, would you be frightened?” The emissary replied, “Of course not; if you were with me, I wouldn’t be frightened at all.” Thus, whenever we are sent into the world on a mission from God, God is always with us; there is nothing to be frightened of.
Rabbi Yehoshua B. Gordon on Parshat Shemot
04 March 2026
You’ve got to be spiritually fit to carry God’s message. You’d better be spiritually fit, because it’ll wear you out: physically, spiritually, and mentally. This is a tough game. Playing this game, you have to be spiritually ready to let God do all the work or it will exhaust you.
Don P
05 March 2026
So long as Colin shut himself up in his room and thought only of his fears and weakness and his detestation of people who looked at him and reflected hourly on humps and early death, he was a hysterical half-crazy little hypochondriac who knew nothing of the sunshine and the spring and also did not know that he could get well and could stand upon his feet if he tried to do it. When new beautiful thoughts began to push out the old hideous ones, life began to come back to him, his blood ran healthily through his veins and strength poured into him like a flood. His scientific experiment was quite practical and simple and there was nothing weird about it at all. Much more surprising things can happen to anyone who, when a disagreeable or discouraged thought comes into his mind, just has the sense to remember in time and push it out by putting in an agreeable determinedly courageous one. Two things cannot be in one place.
Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden
06 March 2026
What is idolatry? Idolatry is a belief in the existence of other gods. What would other the gods be? Anything that has an independent causative force. If we believe that anything in the world, whether that be companies, government, or situations, has a primary, causative effect on our lives—separate from God—that is idolatry. God is the only primary, causative force behind all things. Why does evil exist? To give human beings free will.
Rabbi Yehoshua B. Gordon on Tanya, Chapter 22
07 March 2026
The problem is in our perception. We are looking at the world with a distorted vision. We are looking at the world and life not as it is, but with our prejudices, with our beliefs, with our upbringing, and with our past experiences. If we let go of all that, peel it off part by part, we will be able to see ourselves in the Divine and as part of the Divine.
Paul Coutinho, Just as You Are: Opening Your Life to the Infinite Love of God
08 March 2026
The Almighty is concealed from man in the world. Just like in those experiments where someone in a room sees themselves in the mirror, but on the other side of the mirror is someone who can see everything. Similarly, the Almighty can see us, but all we can see is ourselves.
Rabbi Yehoshua B. Gordon on Tanya, Chapter 21
09 March 2026
God does not deny His grace to the one who does what he can.
Catholic saying
10 March 2026
We are spiritual beings, come into this human or earthly existence, looking for our identity and our authenticity as being spirit, divine, and holy. So our origin is divine, our existence is divine, and our end will be divine.
Paul Coutinho, Just as You Are: Opening Your Life to the Infinite Love of God
11 March 2026
A man goes to a rabbi and says he’s got a problem with worry. The rabbi says: Why are you worried? You’re accomplished; you’ve got a good life. The man says: Why am I worried? I’m worried because I’m worried! The rabbi says: Let me tell you a story. The serpent is the lowliest animal of all. What does it eat? Dirt. There’s plenty of dirt. He’s never going to run out of dirt. The earth is covered in dirt. But he’s always unhappy. Why is he unhappy? Because he’s worried. Why is he worried? Because he’s wondering: What’s going to happen when I run out of dirt, when I eat all the dirt that there is on the earth? That’s why the serpent is so unhappy.
Rabbi Yehoshua B. Gordon on Parshat Beshalach
12 March 2026
Have mercy on me, God, have mercy
for in you my soul has taken refuge.
In the shadow of your wings I take refuge
till the storms of destruction pass by.
Psalm 56
13 March 2026
Why is Moses sent on this important mission riding a donkey? Maybe he could have ridden a horse. But no. The point of the donkey is that this mission is the Almighty’s mission, not his mission, and he needs to maintain a position of humility when he’s doing the Almighty’s work.
Rabbi Yehoshua B. Gordon on Parshat Shemot
14 March 2026
Five points on carrying the message:
I. You don’t have to be extraordinary to be called by God to carry a message.
Father Vincent Lampert
15 March 2026
Five points on carrying the message (continued)
II. We are called regardless of where we are on the spiritual path; it does not matter that we have character defects; they will be worked on by God in due course.
Father Vincent Lampert
16 March 2026
Five points on carrying the message (continued)
III. When asked to carry the message, we must do so, regardless of how crazy or impractical it may seem, regardless of the effort, regardless of looking silly to others, and regardless of the potential for our lives to be reshaped.
Father Vincent Lampert
17 March 2026
Five points on carrying the message (continued)
IV. We are asked by God not to keep the message to ourselves but to pass it on: you have to give it away to keep it.
Father Vincent Lampert
Five points on carrying the message (continued)
18 March 2026
V. God’s mission cannot wait until we think we are ready. There is an urgent need. Your complicated life is not an obstacle. Do not be afraid or make excuses. Simply trust in God and He will make amazing things happen in our lives and in the lives of others.
Father Vincent Lampert
19 March 2026
Five points on carrying the message (continued)
Postscript: We don’t need special tools to carry the message: God’s grace is sufficient. We need not operate in darkness, because God provides the light within us, and that light can lead us to joy, delight, and happiness. Let’s not keep the message to ourselves but carry it to each other.
Father Vincent Lampert
20 March 2026
To receive a blessing from God, we need to create an earthly vessel. The earthly vessel is like a garment. It must be fitted to the size of the person. So if we want to make a living, the blessing will come from God, but we must do our bit on earth. The size of the vessel, the garment, must be proportionate to us, not to the size of the blessing. A garment that is too big or too small will create problems down here and get in the way of receiving the blessing. God is able to deliver huge blessings but only to those who are willing to remain right-sized.
Rabbit Yehoshua B. Gordon on Parshat Beshalach
21 March 2026
We’re all very good at conjuring up enough fear to justify whatever we want to do.
Deep Space Nine
22 March 2026
If we have the ability to help others, we must do it. And if we do it, we are really doing the G-d’s work. Basically, G-d wants to do it, but He says, “I’m making messengers.” If you’re a messenger of G-d, you are very close to Him, and you receive all the blessings. As the expression is in Yiddish: der Aibishter bleibt nisht kin bal-khoyv, the Eternal One does not remain a debtor. He pays. Sooner or later. But that is not the point here. But that’s a side benefit. The main benefit is that we are accomplishing the wishes of G-d.
Rabbi Leib Shapiro
23 March 2026
Life is not happening to you, it’s happening for you.
Anonymous
24 March 2026
You are most your true self when you are totally surrendered to letting G-d work through you.
Rabbi Ari Shishler
25 March 2026
“I’m not teaching any philosophy. What I’m trying to teach is pure science.”
“Some might say that pure science, taught without a spiritual context, is a philosophy, Mrs O’Brien.”
Deep Space Nine
26 March 2026
Another aspect of the blessing of the manna is contained in a commentary. The ease with which the manna was collected would be determined by the level of trust in the Almighty. If someone totally trusted in the blessing of the Almighty, when they left their tent, the manna would be sitting right there in front of them. If they had less trust, they would have to go further for their manna. If they had only a little trust, they would have to walk a long way to find their manna.
Rabbit Yehoshua B. Gordon on Parshat Beshalach
27 March 2026
When you’re watering the garden and water stops coming out of the hosepipe, check you’re not standing on it.
Anonymous
28 March 2026
I have further found a good medicine. This is that man should train himself to do two things: first, to honour all creatures, in whom he recognises the exalted nature of the Creator; the second is to bring the love of his fellow men into his heart, even loving the wicked as if they were his brothers, and more so until the love of his fellow men becomes firmly fixed in his heart … How can he love them? By recalling in his thoughts the good qualities they possess, by covering their defects, by refusing to look at their faults, and by looking only at their good qualities.
Rabbi Moshe Cordovero (The RaMaK)
29 March 2026
No care, but all prayer. No anxiety, but much joyful communion with God. Carry your desires to the Lord of your life, the guardian of your soul. ... Do not pray doubtfully, but thankfully. ... Hide nothing. Allow no want to lie rankling in your bosom; “make known your requests.” Run not to man. Go only to your God.
Charles H. Spurgeon
30 March 2026
One of the Rebbe’s emissaries who was in constant financial difficulties went to the Rebbe and asked for a blessing. The Rebbe said, “May your financial needs be taken care of in the manner of lekhem min hashamayim, in the manner of bread from heaven.” The emissary was thrilled, thinking that, rather than his money coming from earthly sources, it was going to rain down from heaven. It was a while before he realised that bread from heaven was the manna: The trial and tribulation of lekhem min hashamayim is that you have to go to sleep and hope it’s gonna come tomorrow, and that’s the struggle. It’s good news and bad news. The good news, if you believe enough and follow the Almighty’s ways, it comes. The bad news is that every day is a journey. So that’s the idea of lekhem min hashamayim, bread from heaven: it has its tests.
Rabbi Yehoshua B. Gordon on Parshat Beshalach
31 March 2026
I believe that those gifts and graces that we share with someone, in one form or another, are the only ones we own, and they become the platform for bigger and greater graces. Those that we do not share we tend to lose forever.
Paul Coutinho, Just as You Are: Opening Your Life to the Infinite Love of God
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