| The Every Day of Life |
Chapter 1 |
Page 5 |
We could lose out of this world’s life many of its few brilliant deeds and not be much the poorer, but to lose the uncounted faithfulness of the millions of common lives would leave this world a cold and dreary place indeed in which to live.
There ought to be both cheer and instruction in these glimpses of the glory and blessing of the every-day of life. Most of us can expect to do only plain and commonplace things. Only a few people can become famous. Only a rare deed now and then can have its honor proclaimed from the hilltops.
The light of popular praise, at the most, can brighten only a day or two in a lifetime. It is a comfort to reflect that it is the common life of the every-day that in God’s sight is the truest and the best, and that does the most to bless the world. Many of us need the inspiration, which comes from this revealing. The glamour of the conspicuous is apt to deceive us. There is so much glorifying of the unusual and the phenomenal in life that we come to think the common as of but small importance.
People, whose days are all alike in their dull routine, feel that their life is scarcely worth living. If only they could do something startling or sublime, or even sensational, to lift them out of the dreary commonplace of their every-days, they would feel that they were living nobly and worthy. But if they could realize that it is by its moral value that life’s worth is measured, they would know that ordinarily there is ten times more true glory in long unbroken years of simple faithfulness, without distinction or conspicuousness at any point, than there is in any unusual brilliancy in an occasional day or hour.
The every-day of God’s care and revealing is also more to us than his day of wonder-working. The miracles of Christ were not half so rich in blessing for men as his common days with their sweet life, their simple teachings, their ceaseless ministries of good, their compassion, their thoughtfulness, comfort, and helpfulness. Daily providence, with its unrecognized wonders of sunshine and air and rain and snow and heat and cold, and its unfailing gifts of food and raiment and beauty and comfort, is more glorious than the occasional startling events that seem to unveil the very throne of God.
Page 5