| Making the Most of Life |
Chapter 6 |
Page 6 |
Spiritual beauty never can be reached without cost. The blessing is always hidden away in the burden, and can be gotten only by lifting the burden. Self must die if the good in us is to live and shine out in radiance. Michael Angelo used to say, as the chippings flew thick from the marble on the floor of his studio, “while the marble wastes, the image grows.” There must be a wasting of self, a chipping away continually of things that are dear to nature, if the things that are true, and just, and honourable, and pure, and lovely, are to come out in the life. The marble must waste while the image grows.
Then take suffering. Here, too, the same law prevails. Every one suffers. Said Augustine, “God had one Son without sin; he has none without sorrow.” From infancy’s first cry until the old man’s life goes out in a gasp of pain, suffering is a condition of existence. It comes in manifold forms. Now it is in sickness; the body is racked with pain or burns in fever. Ofttimes sickness is a heavy burden. Yet even this burden has a blessing in it for the Christian. Sickness rightly borne makes us better. It unbinds the world’s fetters. It purifies the heart. It sobers the spirit. It turns the eyes heavenward. It strips off much of the illusion of life and uncovers its better realities. Sickness in a home of faith, prayer, and love, softens all the household hearts, makes sympathy deeper, draws all the family closer together.
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