| The Secrets of a Beautiful Life |
Chapter 13 |
Page 7 |
The things we prize most are not those we have gathered, as one plucks flowers on a summer hillside, from the gardens of ease and worldly pleasure. They are things that have become ours through pain, struggle, self-denial, and tears. The lessons learned with greatest difficulty are the ones that are most to us in value and profit. Out of the hardest experiences of struggle and sacrifice we get the qualities that are the brightest ornaments of our character, and the noblest elements of our strength. The lenses through which now we see deepest into heaven once were salt tears. The treasures we hold now with firmest clasp once seemed marred things, unsightly unlovely, things we shrank from receiving. The points in our past which now appear to have been fullest of outcome of good for our life, are those which at the time seemed God’s strange ways with us. Christian joy is transformed sorrow.
Another thing about this joy that Christ gives is that it cannot be taken away from us. Not dependent on earthly conditions, earthly accidents cannot reach it. Very much of our happiness others can take from us. They may smite us with bodily wounding. We may lose out of our own life the things we love, the things which give us comfort and pleasure. But, if we are believers in Christ, we have an inner gladness which no one can touch.
We can conceive of a strong fortress, in time of war, all of whose outer approaches may be assailed and despoiled, but within whose walls and gates there is a place of security which no enemy can enter, which no desolating hand of war can touch. There, if you were to pass within, you would find a quiet home, with music and pictures, with garden and flowers, with love and peace. Like this is the true Christian life. It has its unassailable fortress. Without in the world there are troubles and antagonisms, and the other gladness may all be swept away; but, within, there is a holy place of peace with nothing can invade. How that man is to be pitied who has no joy that others cannot take away, whose whole life, to its innermost stronghold, is open to the tread of alien feet! It is dreadful to have no joys of which the world cannot rob us, to have all our happiness, the deepest and most sacred, within the reach of human or earthly despoiling. Yet there are many people of whom this is true. They have no inner sanctuary of life which is beyond the reach of intrusion, which no foot can invade, which no hand can desecrate. But if we are the friends of Christ, our heart’s joy should be inviolable. Our property, our loved ones, our health, may be taken away, and all earthly sources of happiness despoiled; but deep within, untouched and untouchable, the joy of Christ should still and ever abide.
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