| The Glory of the Common Life |
Chapter 2 |
Page 4 |
In personal experience, too, countless sweetest blessings and joys are born of sorrows. For many a man the things of earth on which he has set his heart are blighted, that his affections may be lifted to things heavenly and eternal. There are many who never saw Christ until the light of some tender human beauty faded before their eyes, when, looking up in the darkness, they beheld that blessed Face beaming its love upon them.
“Through the clouded glass
Of our own bitter tears we learn to look
Undazzled on the kindness of God’s face.
Earth is too dark, and heaven alone shines through.”
A writer tells of a little bird which would not learn to sing the song its master would have it sing while its cage was full of light. It listened and learned a snatch of this, a trill of that, a polyglot of all the songs of the grove, but never a separate and entire melody of its own. Then the master covered its cage and made it dark; and now it listened and listened to the one song it was to learn to sing, and tried and tried and tried again until at last its heart was full of it. Then, when it had caught the melody, the cage was uncovered and it sang the song sweetly ever after in the light.
As it was with the bird, so it is with many of us, God’s children. The Master has a song He wished to teach us, but we will not learn it. All about us earth’s music is thrilling, and we get but a note here and there of the holy strain that is set for us. Then the Master makes it dark about us, calling us aside to suffer, and now we give heed to the sweet song He would teach us until we can sing it through to the end. Then when we have once learned it in darkness, we go out into the light and sing it wherever we move.
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