| Making the Most of Life |
Chapter 22 |
Page 2 |
Trial should not, therefore, be regarded with discouragement, as something which will stunt and dwarf the life and mar its beauty. It should be accepted rather, when it comes, as part of God’s discipline, through which he would bring out the noblest and best possibilities of our character. Perhaps we would be happier for the time if we had easier, more congenial conditions. Children might be happier without restraint, without family government, without chastening – just left to grow up into all willfulness and waywardness. But there is something better in life than present happiness. Disciplined character in manhood, even though it has been gotten through stern and severe home training, is better than a childhood and youth of unrestraint, with a worthless manhood as the outcome. A noble life, bearing God’s image, even at the price of much pain and self denial, is better than years of freedom from care and sacrifice with a life unblessed and lost at the end. “To serve God and love him,” says one, “is higher and better than happiness, though it be with wounded feet and bleeding hands and heart loaded with sorrow.”
“So much we miss
If love is weak; so much we gain
If love is strong. God thinks no pain
Too sharp or lasting to ordain.
To teach us this.”
It is well that we should understand how to receive trial so as to get from its hard experience the good it has for us. For one thing, we should accept it always reverently. Resistance forfeits the blessing which can be yielded only to the loving, submissive spirit. Teachableness is the unvarying condition of learning. To rebel against trial is to miss whatever good it may have brought for us. There are some who resent all severity and suffering in their lot as unkindness in God. These grow no better under divine chastening, but instead are hurt by it. When we accept the conditions of our life, however hard, as divinely ordained, and as the very conditions in which, for a time, we will grow the best, we are ready to get from them the blessing and good intended in them for us.
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