Old Brown Book, Long Been with Me

I have a nice brown leather book that was written long ago. It followed me through Kalamazoo. It waited for me while I lived in a faraway land. It now keeps me company in Baltimore. In all this time, it has served chiefly as decoration. In the odd event that I did crack it open, it's binding quickly found relief as it closed again. It was purchased from the cheap "should just give it away" rack in a bookstore on Westnedge Avenue.
I opened it again the other day and learned immediately that wisdom hid within its pages all that time but that wisdom must be received in the right time and place to be recognized for the truth it brings. If the student is not ready, he will not learn. Here are some words I found... and if you know me and my life... you'll understand...

"When God brings the blank space, see that you do not fill it, but wait. The blank space may come in order to teach you what sanctification means, or it may come after sanctification to teach you what service means."

"God's order has to work up to a crisis in our lives because we will not heed a gentler way... If the crisis has come to you on any line, surrender your will to Him absolutely and irrevocably"

"He forecast in his mind where the test would come, and the test came where he did not expect it."

Chambers, Oswald. My Utmost For His Highest. Uhrichsville, OH: Barbour Publishing, 1963.