| Secrets of a Beautiful Life |
Chapter 3 |
Page 5 |
It is in the hard lot that we learn our best lessons, and do our best living. Certain birds, when they are to be taught to sing new songs, are shut up in a darkened cage. Then they are caused to hear in the darkness the sweet strains which they are to learn. By-and-by they begin to sing what they hear, and they are kept singing it over and over until they have fully learned it. Then the curtain is withdrawn, and now they sing the sweet songs in the sunshine. It is thus that God puts us sometimes into darkness where the conditions are hard. “How can we sing the Lord’s songs here?” we ask. But Divine help comes to us, and grace; and as we try to live gently, patiently, and lovingly, and to sing the songs of joy, we find we can do it in Christ who strengtheneth us. Then there is always blessing in victoriousness. However great the cost of noble living may be, the reward is always greater than the cost.
“How very hard it is to be
A Christian! Hard for you and me,—
Not the mere task of making real
That duty up to its ideal,
Effecting thus, complete and whole,
A purpose of the human soul—
For that is always hard to do;
But hard, I mean, for me and you
To realize it more or less,
With even the moderate success
Which commonly repays our strife
To carry out the aims of life.
‘Tis aim is greater,’ you will say,
‘And so more arduous in every way’;
But the importance of their fruits
Still proves to man, in all pursuits,
Proportional encouragement.”
Let us never disappoint God by saying in any place that we cannot live there beautifully. Let us rather accept the hardship, the struggle, the burden, the trying environment; and, helped by the Divine Spirit, let us learn to do always the things that please God. “When we acquiesce in a trouble,” says Fénélon, “it is no longer such.” Submission takes the bitterness out of pain, which becomes calamity when we resist and chafe. “Peace in this life springs from acquiescence even in disagreeable things, not from exemption from bearing them.” Acquiescence is the faith that gets the Divine strength which makes all things possible.
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