| The Secrets of a Beautiful Life |
Chapter 16 |
Page 5 |
We can be truest and best blessings to others only when we live victoriously ourselves. We owe it therefore to the needy, sorrowing, tempted world about us, to keep our inner life calm, quiet, and strong, restful and full of sweet love, in whatsoever outer turbulence or trail or opposition we must live. The only secret is to abide in Christ.
The lesson has a special application to sickness. Sickness is common. Not always does it prove a means of grace. There are some who are not spiritually benefited by it. Yet it is the duty and privilege of every Christian so to meet the experience of illness or invalidism as to grow every in it into Christlier character. The secret is a living faith in Christ. Restlessness or distrust will mar the Divine work that Christ would do in the heart; but quiet submission to the will of God and peaceful waiting for Him will ensure continual renewal of the inner life even while the outer life is being consumed.
It is well, therefore, that those who are called to endure sickness should learn well how to relate themselves to it, so as not to be harmed by it. Sickness is discouraging. It is not easy for one with life broken, unable longer to run the race with the swift, to keep his spirit glad, cheerful, and wholesome. It is hard not to be able to do the heroic things which the unquenched spirit longs to do. Life seems now to be useless. They appear lost days in which no worthy service can be done for Christ. Too often those who are called to invalidism lose out of their heart the hope, the enthusiasm, the zest of living, and become depressed, unhappy, sometimes almost despairing. But this is not to fail in true and noble living. When we cannot change our conditions we must conquer them, through the help of Christ. If we are sick, we had better not fret nor chafe. Thereby we shall only make our illness worse, retarding our recovery, while at the same time we shall mar the work of grace in our inner life. The captive bird that sits on its perch and sings is wiser than the bird that flies against the wires and tires to get out, only bruising its wings in its unavailing efforts. The sick-room may be made a holy of holies instead of a prison. Then it will be a place of blessing.
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