today's readings

July 25

Daily Reflections

THOSE WHO STILL SUFFER

For us, if we neglect those who are still sick, there is unremitting danger to our own lives and sanity. TWELVE STEPS AND TWELVE TRADITIONS, p. 151

I know the torment of drinking compulsively to quiet my nerves and my fears. I also know the pain of white-knuckled sobriety. Today, I do not forget the unknown person who suffers quietly, withdrawn and hiding in the desperate relief of drinking. I ask my Higher Power to give me His guidance and the courage to be willing to be His instrument to carry within me compassion and unselfish actions. Let the group continue to give me the strength to do with others what I cannot do alone.

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Twenty-Four Hours A Day

A.A. Thought For The Day

We are living on borrowed time. We are living today because of A.A. and the grace of God. And what there is left of our lives we owe to A.A. and to God. We should make the best use we can of our borrowed time and in some small measure pay back for that part of our lives which we wasted before we came into A.A. Our lives from now on are not our own. We hold them in trust for God and A.A. And we must do all we can to forward the great movement that has given us a new lease on life. Am I holding my life in trust for A.A.?

Meditation For The Day

You should hold your life in trust for God. Think deeply on what that means. Is anything too much to expect from such a life? Do you begin to see how dedicated a life in trust for God can be? In such a life miracles can happen. If you are faithful, you can believe that God has many good things in store for you. God can be Lord of your life, controller of your days, of your present and your future. Try to act as God guides and leave all results to Him. Do not hold back, but go all out for God and the better life. Make good your trust.

Prayer For The Day

I pray that I may hold my life in trust for God. I pray that I may no longer consider my life as all my own.

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As Bill Sees It

Praying For Others, p. 206

While praying sincerely, we still may fall into temptation. We form ideas as to what we think God's will is for other people. We say to ourselves, "This one ought to be cured of his fatal malady" or "That one ought to be relieved of his emotional pain," and we pray for these specific things.

Such prayers, of course, are fundamentally good acts, but often they are based upon a supposition that we know God's will for the person for whom we pray. This means that side by side with an earnest prayer there can be a certain amount of presumption and conceit in us.

It is A.A.'s experience that partially in these cases we ought to pray that God's will, whatever it is, be done for others as well as for ourselves.

12 & 12, p. 104

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Keep It Simple

If the spirit within us withers (dies), so to will all the world we build around us.---Theodore Roszab This is what happened during our illness---our spirits were dying. Our relationships were dying. this is because addiction is death. And recovery is life! The Steps breathe like into us. Our groups breathe life into us. We start to heal because we once again feel hope. We're less afraid of what tomorrow may bring. As our hope grows, others feel it too. We're starting to slowly rebuild our world. We're building our world on the Twelve Steps and their message of hope. Prayer for the Day: I give myself to life. Higher Power, work with me as I rebuild my world. Action for the Day: I'll talk with a friend about hope. I'll see my hope as a sign of how close I am to my program.

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Alcoholics Anonymous - Fourth Edition

Jim's Story

This physician, one of the earliest members of A.A.'s first black group, tells of how freedom came as he worked among his people.

A peculiar thing happened in 1940. That year, on a Friday night, a man whom I had known for years come to my office. My father had treated him many years prior to this. This man's wife had been suffering for a couple of months, and when he came in he owed me a little bill. I filled a prescription for him. The following day, Saturday, he came back and said, "Jim, I owe you for the prescription last night. I didn't pay you." I thought, "I know you didn't pay me, because you didn't get a prescription." He said, "Yes. You know the prescription that you gave me for my wife last night." Fear gripped me then, because I could remember nothing about it. It was the first blackout I had to recognize as a blackout. The next morning I carried another prescription to this man's house and exchanged it for the bottle his wife had. Then I said to my wife, "Something has to be done." I took that bottle of medicine and gave it to a very good friend of mine who was a pharmacist and had it analyzed, and the bottle was perfectly all right. But I knew at that point that I couldn't stop, and I knew that I was a danger to myself and to others.

pp. 237-238

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Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions

Step Twelve - "Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs."

In Step Eight, we continued our housecleaning, for we saw that we were not only in conflict with ourselves, but also with people and situations in the world in which we lived. We had to begin to make our peace, and so we listed the people we had harmed and became willing to set things right. We followed this up in Step Nine by making direct amends to those concerned, except when it would injure them or other people. By this time, at Step Ten, we had begun to get a basis for daily living, and we keenly realized that we would need to continue taking personal inventory, and that when we were in the wrong we ought to admit it promptly. In Step Eleven we saw that if a Higher Power had restored us to sanity and had enabled us to live with some peace of mind in a sorely troubled world, then such a Higher Power was worth knowing better, by as direct contact as possible. The persistent use of meditation and prayer, we found, did open the channel so that where there had been a trickle, there now was a river which led to sure power and safe guidance from God as we were increasingly better able to understand Him.

pp. 108-109

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You can get off the elevator anytime, but if you get back on it's only going down. --unknown

Happy memories never wear out. Relive them as often as you want. --Anonymous

Our pasts are perfect in a way our minds can never fully understand. We would not have the opportunities for awakening and experiencing that are ours today, without exactly what happened. Now, it's what we do with our pasts that provides the opportunity for growth. Today, spend some time thinking about the gifts in your past that you may have overlooked. --Mary Manin Morrissey

Live your life and forget your age. --Norman Vincent Peale

In the central place of every heart there is a recording chamber; so long as it receives messages of beauty, hope, cheer, and courage, so long are you young. When the wires are all down and your heart is covered with the snows of pessimism and the ice of cynicism, and then only, are you grown old. --General Douglas MacArthur

"What soap is to the body, laughter is to the soul." --Yiddish Proverb

"The spirit, the will to win, and the will to excel are the things that endure. These qualities are so much more important than the events that occur." --Vince Lombardi

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Father Leo's Daily Meditation

MISFORTUNE

"Experience has taught me this, that we undo ourselves by impatience. Misfortunes have their life and their limits, their sickness and their health." --Michel de Montaigne

Nothing lasts forever. At times I feel sad, angry, resentful and ashamed -- but it passes. In my recovery I have learned to live in "my day" and accept the consequences of that day. I can only deal with life as I experience it. Tomorrow is a new day with new experiences. And some of the experiences are painful. Reality teaches me this. At times I wish I could go through life without pain or rejection but I know that is fantasy. Sobriety does not mean that everything will be perfect --only better!

Nothing is so bad that I need to drink or use over it. Today I know that alcohol increases my pain; it is never a solution. God, who has given me today, will also give me a tomorrow -- and time eases the pain if I work my program. Misfortunes are not worth drinking over. Nothing lasts forever.

Thank You for the gift of a tomorrow.

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My God shall supply all your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus. Philippians 4:19

Jesus says," Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me." John 15:4

"Surely God is my help; the Lord is the one who sustains me." Psalm 54:4

"In everything I did, I showed you that by this kind of hard work we must help the weak, remembering the words the Lord Jesus himself said: 'It is more blessed to give than to receive.'" Acts 20:35

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Daily Inspiration

God wants us happy right now and continually points us in that direction even when we look the other way. Lord, grant that nothing will turn me away from doing Your will.

They are wise who depend on God. Lord, Your perfect law revives my soul. Keeping Your law makes me rich