| Things to Live For |
Chapter 19 |
Page 5 |
Do we get the most and the best possible in our bereavements from the truths which Christ brings to us? Does not our faith’s vision often become so dim with our tears that we lose sight altogether of the immortality into which our Christian dead have entered? We say we believe in the endless life; but too often it is such a shadowy, nebulous thought which we have of it that no comfort comes to us from it. We really mourn our departed friends as lost, while we go on saying in our creed, “I believe in the life everlasting.” Yet we are robbing our own hearts of the comforts that God has provided when we do not take to ourselves the blessed hopes and consolations of our Christian faith. We really hold no living friends with such a sure clasp as that which makes our sainted ones ours. There are many ways of losing friends; but those who have passed into God’s keeping are forever beyond the possibility of being lost to us. Whittier has written in “Snowbound:”–
“And yet, dear heart, remembering thee,
Am I not richer than of old?
Safe in thy immortality,
What change can reach the wealth I hold?
What chance can mar the pearl and gold
Thy love hath left in trust with me?
And while in life’s late afternoon,
Where cool and long the shadows grow,
I walk to meet the night that soon
Shall shape and shadow overflow,
I cannot feel that thou are far
Since near at need the angels are;
And when the sunset gates unbar,
Shall I not see thee waiting stand,
And, white against the evening star,
The welcome of thy beckoning hand?”
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