| Week-Day Religion |
Chapter 29 |
Page 3 |
There is something very sad in the thought that we not only fail to value the rich blessings of God’s love, but that we ofttimes thrust them from us and refuse to take them, thereby both wounding the divine heart and impoverishing our own souls. It would be a very bitter thing if any of us should first be made truly aware of the presence and grace of Christ by his vanishing for ever from our sight, after having for long years stood with wondrous patience at our locked and bolted doors. It would be a bitter thing to learn the blessedness of the things of mercy and love of God as we are often only made aware of the value of earthly blessings – by seeing them depart for ever beyond our reach.
There is another phase of this subject which ought to bring unspeakable comfort to God’s children who are called to suffer earthly losses. If they have God left to them, no other loss is irreparable. A gentleman came home one evening with a heavy heart, and said that he had lost everything. Bankruptcy had overtaken him. “We are utterly beggared,” he said. “All is gone; there is nothing left. We must go out of our home beggars for tomorrow’s bread.” His little girl of five years crept up on his knee, and, looking earnestly into his despairing face, said, “Why, papa, you have mamma and me left.”
Yes, what is the loss of money, stores, houses, costly furniture, musical instruments and works of art while love remains? Or what are temporal and worldly losses of the sorest kind while God remains? There is surely enough in him to compensate a thousand times for every earthly deprivation. Our lives may be stripped bare – home, friends, riches, comforts, gone, every sweet voice of love, every note of joy silenced – and we may be driven out from brightness, music, tenderness and shelter into the cold ways of sorrow; yet if we have God himself left, ought it not to suffice? Is he not able to restore again to us all we have lost? Is he not in himself infinitely more than all his gifts? If we have him, can we need anything else? In very beautiful words has Mrs. Browning expressed this truth:
“All are not taken; there are left behind
Living Beloveds, tender looks to bring,
And make the daylight still a happy thing,
And tender voices, to make soft the wind.
But if it were not so–if I could find
No love in all the world for comforting,
Nor any path but hollowly did ring,
Where ‘Dust to dust’ the love from life disjoined,
And if, before those sepulchers unmoving,
I stood alone (as some forsaken lamb
Goes bleating up the moor in weary dearth),
Crying, ‘Where are ye, O my loved and loving?’–
I know a Voice would sound: ‘Daughter, I AM!
Can I suffice for heaven, and not for earth?’”
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