| The Ministry of Comfort |
Chapter 19 |
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Some people seem to think that if they set apart certain definite days for praise, it is enough. For example, they will be grateful for a whole day once in the year, doing nothing but sing, touching every chord of praise in their being, thinking that this is the way God wants them to show their gratitude. But the annual Thanksgiving Day is not intended to gather into itself the thanksgiving for a whole year; rather it is intended to give the keynote for all the year’s life. Life’s true concert pitch is praise. If we find that we are below the right pitch, we should take advantage of particular thanksgiving seasons to get keyed up. That is the way people do with their pianos – they have them tuned now and then, when the strings get slack and the music begins to grow discordant – and it is quite as important to keep our life in tune as our piano.
The ideal life is one of gladness. Discontent and fretfulness are discord in the song. We have no right to live gloomily or sadly. Go where we may, we hear the music of joy, unless our ears have become tone deaf. The world is full of beauty and full of music. Yet it is strange how many people seem neither to see the loveliness nor hear the music.
There is a legend of an aged priest whom one met painfully toiling up some steep mountain slope. He was asked why he, at such advanced age, was enduring the fatigue of the rugged ascent. He explained that he had spent his life in the cloister, thinking it almost sinful to look upon or admire the beauties of nature. In a sore illness he had come to the very gates of death. There an angel met him and said to him, “That is a beautiful word you have come from.” The monk reflected that while he had lived many years in this world, he had seen but little of it and knew almost nothing of its loveliness. Recovering from his illness, he resolved to devote his remaining days to travel, that he might look upon as many as possible of the beautiful things of this world, which thus far he had failed to see.
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