Results & Duty

Wikipedia

"Duty is ours; results are God's." John Quincy Adams

He said this when asked about how he could press on with the fight against slavery when it seemed so little progress was being made. Of course, he died before the Emancipation Proclamation was signed into law, but without the groundwork he laid and the fact that he and Abraham Lincoln overlapped for one year in the House of Representatives, maybe we wouldn't have had it at all. 

This quote is so encouraging to me.  Even though our kids grow and mature so quickly, in the day to day of it all, it often seems as if no real progress is being made - in us or in the children.  It can be discouraging.

Unless we remember, as John Quincy Adams did, that God is in charge of the results. 

"And let us not lose heart in doing good, for in due time we shall reap if we do not grow weary." Galatians 6:9