| The Glory of the Common Life |
Chapter 1 |
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Some of the happiest people in the world are doing the plainest tasks, are living in the plainest way, have the fewest luxuries, and scarcely ever have an hour for rest or play. They are happy because they are contented. They love God. They follow Christ. They have learned to love their work, and do it with delight, with eagerness, with enthusiasm. A pastor tells of calling at a little home in one of the smallest house in his parish. There is a widowed wife who goes out to work all day, and a girl of twenty who also works; there is a boy of ten or twelve who is at school. It would not have been surprising if a tone of discontent hand been complaints about their hard condition. But the pastor heard no word that was not glad. The three people in the little house had learned to see brightness in their humble circumstances. All the dreariness was touched with a heavenly gleam. The rough thorn bush burned with fire.
The angels find much of earth’s truest happiness in most unlikely places. Many of the sweetest Christians in the world are those who have least of earthly gladness. Their joy is the joy of the Lord, a joy which is transmuted sorrow. Many of the songs which are fullest of praise are sung in chambers of pain. St. Paul had learned to rejoice in tribulation. Many of the most radiant experiences of Christian life are born of pain. Jesus gave a beatitude for sorrow: “Blessed are they that mourn; for they shall be comforted.”
The North American Indians have a strange and beautiful fancy. They say that as the flowers fade their beauty is not lost, but is gathered up into the rainbow, and thus the flowers live again in even richer colours than before. So the blessings that are taken out of our hands on earth are only gathered into heavenly blessedness, where they shall be ours forever. The rough thorn bush of sorrow is made by faith to appear in unfading glory, to glow in the radiance of God’s eternal love.
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