Best Thoughts by George MacDonald

I have yet to use this site as a medium for self-expression but these two wonderful stanzas from George MacDonald’s “Diary of an Old Soul” so completely rescued me recently from the spell of “an evil mood” - a moment of near-discouragement and self-pity – that I cannot help but share them:




I to myself have neither power nor worth,
Patience nor love, nor anything right good;
My soul is a poor land, plenteous in dearth –
Here blades of grass, there a small herb for food –
A nothing that would be something if it could;
But if obedience, Lord, in me do grow;
I shall one day be better than I know.

The worst power of an evil mood is this –
It makes the bastard self seem in the right,
Self, self the end, the goal of human bliss.
But if the Christ-self in us be the might
Of saving God, why should I spend my force
With a dark thing to reason of the light –
Not push it rough aside, and hold obedient course?

“A nothing that would be something if it could” – that pretty much sums up the human race; and would be a totally depressing thought were it not for “the Christ-self in us” being “the might of saving God.” May He increase as we decrease!