| The Secrets of a Beautiful Life |
Chapter 6 |
Page 8 |
Sorrow hurts some lives. It imbitters them. It leaves them broken, disheartened, not caring more for life. But this is not the Christian way. We should accept sorrow, however it may come to us, as bringing with it a fragment of God’s sweet will for us, as bringing also some new reveling of divine love. We should meet it quietly, reverently, careful not to miss the blessing it brings to us. Then we should rise up again at once and go on with our work and duty. Some hands are left hanging down after grief has come. “I do not care any more for life,” men are sometimes heard to say. “I have no interest in my business, since my wife died. I want to give it all up.” But that is not victorious living. Sorrow absolves us from no duty, from no responsibility. Our work is not finished because our friend’s work is done. God’s plan for our life goes on, though for the life dearest to us it has ended. We rise the morning after the funeral and find the old tasks waiting for us, clamoring for our coming, and must go forth at once to take them up. “Let us dry our tears and go on,” wrote a Christian man to his friend, after a sore bereavement. That is the true spirit.
We ought to live more earnestly than ever after grief has touched our heart. Our life has been enriched by the experience. Tears leave the soil of the heart more fertile. The experience of sorrow teaches us many lessons. We are wise afterward, more thoughtful, better fitted to be guide and helper to others prepared especially to be comforters of those — whom, after our own experience, we find passing through affliction. Instead, therefore, of letting our hands hang down in despairing weakness, we should rise up quickly, fresh from our new anointing, and hasten on to the duty that waits for us.
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