Cheerfulness

'Suppose when you awake in the morning, before offering your morning prayer, you think of all the blessings with which you are surrounded. You reflect how many persons, during the past night, have tossed upon beds of pain. How many have died and find themselves this morning in the eternal world, unprepared for its awful scenes! My Heavenly Father has kept me alive, and another day is now given to me in which to prepare for Heaven. The Lord has provided me with all necessary clothes to wear, and food to eat. I have kind friends around me; opportunities for doing good open before me; and if I am faithful in duty this day, how happily may its hours glide along! And above all, --blissful thought,-- if the Lord should see fit to take me from the world today, I cannot doubt that He has, for my blessed Savior's sake, forgiven my sins, and that He will take me to Heaven. Every day is carrying me nearer to eternal holiness and happiness. O, how much occasion have I for a heart overflowing with gratitude! I shall indeed be inexcusably ungrateful to my Heavenly Father if, when crowned with all these blessings, I have a sad and murmuring Heart.
"Heavenly Father," you say, in meditative prayer, "help me this day to manifest my gratitude to Thee by happy love. May I so love Thee, and serve Thee, and have such confidence in Thy goodness, and so subdue all those passions which are sinful, and consequently disturb one's peace, and so perform all my duties that I may have a tranquil heart all the day long."'

~John S.C. Abbot, from The Mother at Home