| The Every Day of Life |
Chapter 1 |
Page 7 |
We cry out for visions of God, when, if our eyes were opened, we should see God’s face mirrored in all about us. There is a legend of one who traveled many years and over many lands, seeking God, but seeking in vain. Then, returning home, and taking up her daily duties, God appeared to her in these, showing her that he was ever close beside her.
Whittier, in a beautiful poem, “The Chapel of the Hermits,” represents one seeking the Holy Land, and at last learning he needed not rock nor sand nor storied stream of morning-land, to reveal Christ: -
“The heavens are glassed in Merrimac;
What more could Jordan render back?
We lack but open eye and ear
To find the Orient’s marvels here;
The still, small voice in autumn’s hush,
Yon maple wood the burning bush.
Henceforth my heart shall sigh no more
For olden time and holier shore;
God’s love and blessing, then and there,
Are now and here and everywhere.”
So there is glory everywhere in life, if only we have eyes to see it. The humblest lot affords room enough for the noblest living. There is opportunity in the most commonplace life for splendid heroism’s, for higher than angelic ministries, for fullest and clearest revealing’s of God.
“Every day,” says Goethe, “is a vessel into which a great deal may be poured, if we will actually fill it up; that is, with thoughts and feelings, and their expression into deeds as elevated and amiable as we can reach to.”
The days are well enough: it is with ourselves whether we make them radiant and beautiful, whether we fill them with life. A mere dreary treadmill round – waking, eating, drinking, walking, working, sleeping – is not enough to make any life worthy; we must put the glory of love, of best effort, of sacrifice, of prayer, of upward-looking, and heavenward-reaching, into the dull routine of our life’s every-day, and then the most burdensome and uneventful life will be made splendid with the glory of God.
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