| Making the Most of Life |
Chapter 25 |
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But how often do we see the blessing rejected for the solicitation of mere idle pleasures that bring no true good that entangle the life in all manner of complications, that lead into the ways of temptation, and that too often end in disaster and sorrow.
There is a time for the choosing of friends, and when that time is passed and the choice has been made, the door is shut. Then it is too late to go back. There are many people in midlife, bound now in the chains of evil companionships, who would give all they have for the sweet delights and pure pleasures of friendship which once might have been theirs, which in youth reached out to them in vain white hands of importunity and blessing. But it is too late; the door is shut.
So it is with the opportunities of doing good to others, comforting, helping, cheering, lightening burdens, giving gladness and joy. We stand continually before the open doors which we do not enter. Ofttimes we shrink with timid feeling from the sweet ministry, holding back the sympathetic word or restraining ourselves from the doing of the gentle kindness, thinking our proffer of love might be unwelcome. Or we do not perceive the opportunity to give a blessing. This is true very often, especially in the closer and tenderer intimacies of life. We do not recognize the heart hunger in our loved ones, and we walk with them day by day, failing to help them in the thousand ways in which we might help them, until they are gone from us and door is shut. Then all we can do is to bear the pain of regret, having only the hope that in some way in the life beyond we may be able to pay – though so late – love’s debt.
“How will it be
When you at last in heaven we see–
Dear souls, whose footsteps in lost days
Made musical earth’s toil worn ways,
While we not half the loneliness
That bound you to our side could guess?
Where angels know your footfall we
Are fain to be.
“We never knew–
So heedlessly we walked with you–
The drops we jostled from your cup,
That spilt, could not be gathered up;
We might have given you foam and glow
From our own beaker’s overflow;
Ah! What we might have been to you
We never knew.
“We might have lent
Such strength, such comfort and content
To you, out of our ample store;
We might have hastened on before
To life the shadows from your way,
Darkened, ere noon, to twilight’s gray;
With earth’s chilled air love’s warm heart scent
We might have blent.
“Dear, wistful eyes,
Ye haunt us with your kind surprise,
Your tender wonder that a heart
Should thus be left alone, apart,
So loving, so misunderstood
By us, in our self centred mood:
Alas! In vain to you arise
Our longing cries.
“Oh, will you wait
For us beyond the shining gate?
Though lovely gifts behind you left,
We want yourselves; we are bereft.
From your new mansion glorious
Will you lean out to look for us?
Shut is the far off, shining gate–
Are we too late?”
These are but illustrations. The same is true in all phases of life. Every day doors are opened for us which we do not enter. For a little time they stand open with bidding and welcome, and then they are closed, to be opened no more for ever. To every one of us along our years there comes opportunities, which, if accepted and improved, would fit us for worthy character, and for noble, useful living, and lead us in due time to places of honour and blessing. But how many of us there are who reject these opportunities and lose the good they brought for us from God! Then one by one the doors are shut, cutting off the proffered favours while we go on unblessed.
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