| The Glory of the Common Life |
Chapter 2 |
Page 3 |
Everyone we meet any day comes to us either to receive some gift or blessing from us, or to bring some gift or blessing to us. We do not think of this, usually, in our crowded days, in the confusion of meetings and partings. We do not suppose there is any meaning in what we call the incidental contacts with life, as when we ride upon the car beside another for a few minutes, or meet another at a friend’s house and talk a little while together, or when we sit beside another in the same office day after day. We are not in the habit of attaching any importance to these contacts with others. We do not think that God ordered this meeting or that, that he sent this person to us because the person needs us, and that we are to do something for him, or else we need something, some influence, some inspiration, some cheer, from him. The fact is that God is in all our life and is always ordering its smallest events.
When the older people think of it, they will see that this is true. When they look back over their years, they will find that the strange network of circumstances and experiences that has marked their days, has not been woven by chance, is no confused tangle of threads, crossing and recrossing, without plan or direction, but rather that it makes a beautiful web, with not one thread out of place. The whole is the filling out of a pattern designed by the great Master of life. Most of the friendships of our lives are made in this way – you and your friend meeting first by chance, as we would say. You did not choose each other. Emerson spoke for all when he said, “My friends have come to me unsought; the great God gave them to me.” All life is thus full of God.
Jesus taught the importance of the present opportunity in the Garden of Gethsemane. He asked three of his disciples to keep watch with him while he went deeper into the shadows and knelt in prayer. A great anguish was upon him, and he needed and craved human sympathy. After his first agony of supplication he came back to his friends, hoping to get a little strength from their love, but found them asleep. In his bitter disappointment he returned to his place of prayer. A second time he came back, and again they were asleep. The third time he said to them, “Sleep on now and take your rest.” There was no need to awake and watch any longer. The hour had come, the traitor was approaching, and the torches were flashing through the trees. There is a strange pathos in the Master’s final words. The disciples had had their opportunity for helping him, but had not improved it. They had slept when his heart was crying out for their waking. Now the hour was past when waking would avail, and they might as well sleep on.
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