| The Joy of Service |
Chapter 13 |
Page 4 |
It becomes a very practical question, how we may meet life so that we shall take no harm from its experiences of testing and danger.
Consider sorrow, for instance. There is a prevalent impression that sorrow is at least a safe condition, that those who endure it are thereby brought nearer to God, and that some good or blessing comes always from the bitterness of grief. But this impression is not correct. Sorrow is an experience of great spiritual peril. Many gentle lives are irreparably hurt by it. Too often in the experience of grief faith’s vision of Christ is obscured, fellowship with God is interrupted, Christian energy is paralyzed, and the heart grows bitter.
Yet it is possible to pass through sorrow without being harmed by it. One’s heart may be kept sweet under all the brackish tides of grief, like the fresh water spring beside the sea, over which the salt floods pour twice each day, but which emerges from each burial fresh as ever. All depends upon the way we relate ourselves to our sorrow. If we meet it without submission, with rebellious feeling; or hopelessly, shutting out the stars; or without faith, letting go the hand of Christ and forgetting the Divine love and grace, – only harm can come to us from it. But if we meet it with reverent trust, knowing that we are in God’s hands, and resting there in quietness and confidence, singing while we suffer, we deprive sorrow of its power to work us harm, and compel it to yield us rich blessing instead. Acquiescence in the will and way of God takes the bitterness out of trouble, and preserves in the heart the gentleness of Christ and the peace of God through the darkest hours.
Or consider temptation. When we think of the malignity of the Evil One, the fierceness and persistence of the assaults which are made upon every human soul, and the insidiousness of sin, it is no wonder that we sometimes cry out in alarm, and ask how it is possible to pass through this world and keep our life unspotted. Yet it is possible. There is a way of meeting the sorest temptation so that no trace of harming shall be left. No power of evil can force the door of our heart, or enter, unless we open to it with our own hand. As Luther somewhere says, we cannot keep the birds from flying about our head, but we can prevent them from building their nests in our hair. We may endure the utmost pressure of temptation, and not be hurt – being tempted is not sin; but the moment we yield in any degree, we have received harm. Yet it is not necessary that we should yield; for Christ has overcome the world, and through Him the weakest of us may be more than conquerors.
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