| The Glory of the Common Life |
Chapter 10 |
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Some people carry the mistakes of all their years with them unto the end, and they hang like chains about them, so that thy can make no progress. But this is a fearful waste of life. We grow by making mistakes. Think how many mistakes you made in learning to write, how many copybooks you spoiled before your penmanship became a credit to you! Think how many mistakes the artist makes before he is able to put a worthy picture on canvas! How many mistakes the musician makes before he is able to play a piece of music well! In every department of life there are years and years with little but mistakes, immaturities, blunders, while men and women are preparing for beautiful living and noble work. Forget your mistakes, leave them behind, let God take care of them, and go on to better things. Build a palace on your failures, making them part of the foundation.
We should forget the hurts we receive. Somebody did you harm last year. Somebody was unkind to you and left a wound. Forget these hurts. Do not remember them; do not cherish them, allowing them to rankle in your heart. The other day a man’s hand was swollen and black, in serious danger of blood poisoning, all from a little splinter which some way got into a finger, and was permitted to stay there until it almost made necessary the amputation of the hand or arm, endangering the life. That is the way little hurts, when remembered, fester and make great distress, and sometimes produce even fatal results. Remember how Cain’s envy was nursed and grew into fratricide. Jesus warned against anger, saying it is murder, that is, the beginning of murder, a feeling that, if cherished, may ripen into actual crime.
There are people who grow jealous of another. First it is only a feeling of which they are ashamed. But they brood over it, think of it day and night, until it grows and at length fills their whole life, and becomes a hateful passion which spoils their days and possibly ends in some great wrong. How much wiser is the oyster! A tiny grain of sand gets under its shell and grinds and hurts and makes a sore. Instead, however, of letting it become an ugly wound, the oyster, by peculiar secretions, makes a pearl. That is what we may do with others’ unlovingness or their faults – change them into pearls of beauty in our character. If any one hurts you by an unkindness, forget it and let the wound be healed in love.
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