Thoughts for the Day – Sunlight

By | April 4, 2023
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A.A. Thoughts for the Day

Sunlight

When the thought was expressed to me that there might be a God personal to me, I didn’t like the idea. So my friend Ebby made what then seemed a novel suggestion. He said, ‘Why don’t you choose your own conception of God?’ That statement hit me hard. It melted the icy intellectual mountain in whose shadow I had lived and shivered many years. I stood in the sunlight at last.”
Bill W., Alcoholics Anonymous, p. 12
As Bill Sees It, p. 313

Thought to Consider…

Joy isn’t the absence of pain – it’s the presence of God.

AACRONYMS

B E S T
Been Enjoying Sobriety Today?

Just for Today

Release
From “On a Winter Day”

I knew I had to have a new beginning, and this beginning had to be here. I could not start anywhere else. I had to let go of the past and forget the future. As long as I held on to the past with one hand and grabbed at the future with the other hand, I had nothing to hold on to today with. So I had to begin here, now. The next time I went back to my A.A. group, the ‘happy hypocrites’ looked different to me. I began to see love in their eyes and greater warmth than I had ever seen before. I mentioned it to my sponsor and he said, ‘The reason you see love in these people’s eyes is because you are beginning to love them. The love that we see in their eyes is the reflection of our own love. We have got to love to be loved.'”
– Decatur, Georgia
1973 AAWS, Inc.
Came to Believe, 30th printing 2004, p. 46

Daily Reflections

CRYING FOR THE MOON

“This very real feeling of inferiority is magnified by his childish sensitivity and it is this state of affairs which generates in him that insatiable, abnormal craving for self-approval and success in the eyes of the world. Still a child, he cries for the moon. And the moon, it seems, won’t have him!”
LANGUAGE OF THE HEART, p. 102

While drinking I seemed to vacillate between feeling totally invisible and believing I was the center of the universe. Searching for that elusive balance between the two has become a major part of my recovery. The moon I constantly cried for is, in sobriety, rarely full; it shows me instead its many other phases, and there are lessons in them all. True learning has often followed an eclipse, a time of darkness, but with each cycle of my recovery, the light grows stronger and my vision is clearer.
Copyright 1990
ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS WORLD SERVICES, INC.

As Bill Sees It

“. . . In All Our Affairs”

The chief purpose of A.A. is sobriety. We all realize that without sobriety we have nothing. However, it is possible to expand this simple aim into a great deal of nonsense, so far as the individual member is concerned. Sometimes we hear him say, in effect, Sobriety is my sole responsibility. After all, I’m a pretty fine chap, except for my drinking. Give me sobriety, and I’ve got it made! As long as our friend clings to this comfortable alibi, he will make so little progress with his real life problems and responsibilities that he stands in a fair way to get drunk again. This is why A.A.’s Twelfth Step urges that we ‘practice these principles in all our affairs.’ We are not living just to be sober; we are living to learn, to serve, and to love.”
LETTER, 1966

Big Book Quote

“It is easy to let up on the spiritual program of action and rest on our laurels. We are headed for trouble if we do, for alcohol is a subtle foe. We are not cured of alcoholism. What we really have is a daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance of our spiritual condition.”
2001 AAWS, Inc., Fourth Edition
Alcoholics Anonymous, p. 85 – Into Action

Twenty Four Hours a Day

A.A. Thought for the Day

When I came into A.A., I found men and women who had been through the same things I had been through. But now they were thinking more about how they could help others than they were about themselves. They were a lot more unselfish than I ever was. By coming to meetings and associating with them, I began to think a little less about myself and a little more about other people. I also learned that I didn’t have to depend on myself alone to get out of the mess I was in. I could get a greater strength than my own. Am I now depending less on myself and more on God?

Meditation for the Day

You cannot help others unless you understand the person you are trying to help. To understand the problems and temptations of others, you must have been through them yourself. You must do all you can to understand others. You must study their backgrounds, their likes and dislikes, their reactions and their prejudices. When you see their weaknesses, do not confront the person with them. Share your own weaknesses, sins, and temptations and let other people find their own convictions.

Prayer for the Day

I pray that I may serve as a channel for God’s power to come into the lives of others. I pray that I may try to understand them.
Hazelden Foundation PO Box 176 Center City, MN 55012

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