| The Joy of Service |
Chapter 2 |
Page 7 |
Well it would be for us all if we learned the lesson that joy is a duty. God wants us to be happy; and if we live as we should live, we shall be happy. This is not saying that we shall have no sorrow, or that life will be always easy and pleasant for us; but we may at least be always overcomers. We have reason to rejoice, whatever our circumstances and our condition may be. There is an inner life, a life hid with Christ in God, which should be unconquerable in a Christian, though all earthly things are swept away. There is a world beyond this sphere, – a world where no storms beat, and where nothing hurtful ever shall come; why should we be so affected by what takes place here, where we are staying but a little time?
Life is made up of habits. We ask God to help us to keep sweet and to live joyfully. He is ready to do it, but the way He would help us is in little lessons which we must learn for ourselves. He will never take out of our life all our miserable ways at one time, and put in place of them a full set of lovely ways, as one might change the works of a watch. That is not God’s way of remaking us. We are scholars in Christ’s school, and are to learn of Him. No pupil can master an art or a science in a day: it takes months and years. We cannot learn in a day to live joyfully and victoriously; but we can get a lesson today and another tomorrow, letting no day pass without its line. Meanwhile, God will help us continually, encouraging every effort, permitting us to fail in no lesson. If only we are diligent and persistent, the most cheerless of us can at last so learn the habit of joy, that we shall fill our days with song. Susan Coolidge tells us how all such lessons are learned: –
“How does the soul grow? Not all in a minute.
Now it may lose ground, and now it may win it;
Now it resolves, and again the will faileth;
Now it rejoiceth, and now it bewaileth;
Now it hopes fructify, then they are blighted;
Now it walks sunnily, now gropes benighted,
Fed by discouragements, taught by disaster.
So it goes forward, now slower, now faster,
Till, all the pain past, and failures made whole,
It is full grown, and the Lord rules the soul.”
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