“Lord, I had chosen another lot,
But then I had not chosen well;
Thy choice, and only thine, was good;
No different lot, search heaven or hell,
Had blessed me, fully understood;
None other, which thou orderest not.”
Many of life’s worst dangers are unsuspected. Where we suppose there are good and blessing, there is hidden peril. Disease lurks oftentimes in a soft, still, dreamy atmosphere, which we think delicious wit hits sweet odors, while the chill, rough, wintry blast, from which we shrink as too severe, comes laden with life and health. Most of us think of a life of ease, leisure, and luxury as the most highly favored lot, one to be envied. We are not apt to think of it at least as one of danger. Yet there is no doubt that a life of rugged toil, hardship, and self-denial, which we took upon as almost a misfortune, is far safer than one of ease.
It is said that there was laid one morning on the minister’s pulpit a little folded paper which, when opened, contained the words, “The prayers of this congregation are requested for a person who is growing rich.” It certainly seemed a strange request for prayer. If it had been for a person who misfortune or calamity had become suddenly poor; or for a person who was suffering in some great adversity; or for one who was in sorrow and distress, who had met with sore loss or bereavement, every heart would at once have felt deep sympathy. Such experiences as these are thought to be trying and perilous ones, in which people need special grace. We instinctively pray for those who are in trouble. We think these need our prayers. We regard such conditions as fraught with danger. But to ask prayers for a person who was growing rich, no doubt too many people in the congregation seemed incongruous. Where they not indeed specially favored? Where they not receiving peculiar blessing? Should it not rather have been a request for thanksgiving for this person’s success?
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