| Week-Day Religion |
Chapter 24 |
Page 3 |
Another way to train ourselves to cheerful views of life is resolutely to refuse to be frightened at shadows, or even to see trouble where there is none. Half or more of the things that most worry us have no existence save in a disordered fancy. Many things that in the dim distance look like shapes of peril, when we draw near to them melt into harmless shadows, or even change into forms of friendliness. Much of the gloomy tinge that many people see on everything is caused by the color of the glasses through which they look. We sit behind our blue glass windows, and then wonder what makes everything blue. The greater part of our discontent is caused by some imaginary trouble which never really comes. We can do much toward curing ourselves of fretting and worrying by refusing to be fooled by a foreboding imagination.
Then we need to learn ever to make the best of things. There will always be cloudy days. No one can live without meeting discomforts, disappointments and hardships. No wisdom, no industry of ours can eliminate from our experiences all that is disagreeable or painful. But shall we allow the one discordant note in the grand symphony to mar for us all the noble music? Shall we permit the one discomfort in our home to cast a cloud over all its pleasures and embitter all its joys? Shall we not seek for the bright side? There is really sunshine enough in the darkest day to make any ordinary mortal happy if he has eyes to see it. It is marvelous what a trifling thing will give joy to a truly grateful heart. Mungo Park in the bleak desert found the greatest delight in a single tuft of moss growing in the sand. It saved him from despair and from death and filled his soul with joy and hope. There is no lot in life so dreary that it has not at least one little patch of beauty or its one wee flower looking up out of the dreariness, like a smile of God.
Even if the natural eye can see no brightness in the cloud, the faith of the Christian knows that there is good in everything for the child of God. There are reasons, no doubt, why no perfect happiness can be found in this world. If there were no thorns in our pillow here, should we care to pillow our heads on the bosom of divine love? Our Father makes the nest rough to drive us to seek the warmer, softer nest prepared for us in his own love.
To each one who is truly in Christ and who really loves God there is a promise of good out of all things. There is a wondrous alchemy in the divine providence that out of the commingling of life’s strange elements always produces blessing. Thus faith’s vision sees good in all things, however dark they may appear, and ill in nothing. We need but living faith in God to enable us to take a cheerful view of any experience.
There is another purely Christian element in the culture of contentment which must not be overlooked. The more the heart becomes engaged with God and its affections enchained about him, the less it is disturbed by the little roughness and hardships of earth. Things that fret childhood have no power to break the peace of manhood. As we grow into higher spiritual manhood and become more and more filled with Christ we shall rise above the power of earth’s discontents. We shall be happy even amid trials and losses, amid discomforts and disappointments, because our life is hid with Christ in God and we have meat to eat of which the world knows not.
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