| Things to Live For |
Chapter 13 |
Page 5 |
Few of us think of such expressions of complaint as being wrong. It is so common to give way to our feeling when we are suffering that we come to regard it as an unavoidable consequence of our infirmity. But we need to remember that in all our experiences of pain we are representing Christ; and it is quite as much our duty to be patient in suffering, as it is to be honest, truthful, and just in our dealings with our fellow men. A failure to be so is a failure in most faithful witnessing for Christ. Nor do we know what may be the effect on the faith and trust of others of our want of quietness and confidence in suffering.
One who had seen a friend passing through a long season of intense pain with sustained joy which often broke into song, said, “Now I know that there is a reality in the religion of Christ. My friend never could have endured her suffering as she did, if she had not been divinely helped.” What would have been the effect on this same friend if the sufferer had given way to fretting and complaining as so many Christians do in their experiences of pain?
Nor do we know how such failures – trivial, they seem to us – hurt our own life, and rob us of the deeper joy and the richer peace which might have been ours. We get so accustomed to chafing, worrying, complaining, irritation of temper, and impatience, that we rarely think of these things as being hurtful to our own souls. But there is not one of the failures of our infirmity which, besides its evil effect on those about us, does not also leave its marring or wounding on our own life, and hinder in some degree our growth and happiness as a Christian. There are acts of single moments which cast a shadow over all life’s after years. Moses was the meekest of men; but once, and just for a moment, in a great stress, and when tried by a most unreasonable people, he lost his patience, and spoke unadvised words. We know what that one minute’s loss of meekness cost him. It prevented his entering into the land of promise, toward which for forty years he had been toiling.
Page 5