| The Every Day of Life |
Chapter 10 |
Page 4 |
Only less lonely is it for the young people whom circumstances take away in early years from the home where through childhood their life has been gently nourished. The home still stands, and the love is still there with all its blessed warmth, and letters can be sent and received, and now and then there can be a return for a brief stay in the sacred shelter.
This mitigates the loss and the loneliness; yet even this experience is oftentimes a very sad one. Away from home there is always a loss not of love only, but also of protection. The young people, who leave quiet rural homes for life in the midst of a great city, plunge into perils from which only Christ can shield them.
But blessed is the life, which in any earthly homelessness can say, “Yet, I am not alone, because Christ is with me.” Blessed is that loneliness or homelessness which has Christ to fill the emptiness. With Christ unseen yet loved and made real to the heart by love and faith, even a room in a boarding-house may become a home, a sanctuary of peace, and a shelter of divine love.
Another time of special loneliness is when sorrow strips off the sweet friendships of life. Old age is an illustration. Old people are oftentimes very lonely. Once they were the center of groups of friends and companions who clustered about them. But the years brought their changes. Now the old man/woman stands alone. Still the streets are full; but where are the faces of forty, fifty years ago? There is a memory of vacant chairs, of marriage altar with the un-bindings and the separations that followed. The old faces are gone. It is young life that now fills the home, the street, the church, and the old people are lonely because their old friends are gone.
Yet in Christ even old age can say, “I am not alone.” No changes in life can take him away. He is the companion of life’s feebleness. He loves the old people. There is a special promise for them: “Even to old age I am he, and even to hoary-hairs will I carry you.” Christian old age is very near to glory. It will not be long till the old people reach home to stand again amid the circle of loved ones that blessed their youth and early years.
“So long thy power has blessed me, sure it still
Will lead me on
O’er moor and fen, o’er crag and torrent, till
The night is gone,
And with the morn those angel faces smile
Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile.”
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