| Week-Day Religion |
Chapter 4 |
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How can we do this? We must first recognize the fact that our life must be lived just in its own circumstances. We cannot at present change our surroundings. Whatever we are to make of our lives must be made in the midst of our actual experiences. Here we must either win our victories or suffer our defeats. We may think our lot hard and may wish it were otherwise, that we had a life ease and luxury, amid softer scenes, with no briers or thorns, no worries or provocations. Then we should be always gentle, patient, serene, trustful, and happy. How delightful it would be never to have a care, an irritation, a cross, a single vexing thing!
But meanwhile this fact remains – that our aspiration cannot be realized, and that whatever our life is to be made, beautiful or marred, we must make it just where we are. No restless discontent can change our lot. We cannot get into any Elysium merely by longing for it. Other persons may have other circumstances, possibly more pleasant than ours, but here are ours. We may as well settle this point at once and accept the battle of life on this field; else, while we are vainly wishing for a better chance, the opportunity for victory shall have passed.
The next thought is that the place in which we find ourselves is the place in which the Master desires us to live our life.
“Thou cam’st not to thy place by accident:
It is the very place God meant for thee.”
There is no haphazard in this world. God leads to every one of his children by the right way. He knows where and under what influences each particular life will ripen best. One tree grows best in the sheltered valley, another by the water’s edge, another on the bleak mountain top swept by storms. There is always adaptation in nature. Every tree or plant is found in the locality where the conditions of its growth exist, and does God give more thought to trees and plants than to his own children? He places us amid the circumstances and experiences in which our life will grow and ripen the best. The peculiar discipline we severally need to bring out in us the beauties and graces of true spiritual character. We are in the right school. We may think that we would ripen more quickly in a more easy and luxurious life, but God knows what is best; he makes no mistakes.
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