| The Joy of Service |
Chapter 19 |
Page 3 |
The face ofttimes carries in itself an outer record, one that all can see, of the inner life. The face of a young girl has only fair beauty. She has never suffered, nor has she known care, struggle, or pain. Love comes; and its story is written in glowing, transfiguring lines on the features. Motherhood brings another new experience, and the girl-face passes, is left behind. We see now instead the earnest, thoughtful, serious, solicitous woman face. The years move on with their eager life and deep yearning, their trial, their care, their broken nights and anxious days, their hopes and fears, their desires and longings, their prayers and crying for help. There is sickness; and the mother is ever at the bedside, her heart in her watching. Perhaps death comes, and sorrow overwhelms her. As the children grow up, the mother’s load grows heavier. She has her fond hopes and dreams, which too often she must see vanish without realization. So she lives on until she is threescore and ten.
Now, if we were to bring together the portraits of the young girl at twenty and the mother at seventy, we should see all the story of the fifty years graven on the old woman’s face. We might comment upon the difference in the two pictures, saying, “What a pity the mother at seventy could not still have the sweet girl face of twenty!” But there is far more meaning in the old woman’s face than in the girl’s. Every line holds a story of self denial. Every mark of fading is a record of love’s toil and cost. Under all the traces which tell of age and feebleness there run under lines which tell of victoriousness, of battles fought and won, of lessons learned in tears, of heart struggles, of joy and hope, of pain and sorrow, of griefs and disappointments.
Page 3