| The Best Things in Life |
Chapter 16 |
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Another item in this programme for a day is defense, “Deliver me, O Jehovah, from mine enemies; I flee to thee to hide me.” The day is full of dangers. We do not know it. We see no danger. We go out, not dreaming of any possible peril. All seems fair and safe, yet everywhere there are enemies and dangers. How can we be sure of protection? We can commit our lives into the care of God. We have no promise that prayer will remove the dangers out of the path – that is not the way God usually makes our days safe for us. Prayer brings divine blessing down into our lives, so that we shall not be hurt by enemies. The problem of Christian life is not to get an easy way, but to pass over the hardest way, and through its worst perils, unhurt. To omit prayer is to face the world’s dangers unprotected. To pray is to commit ourselves to the keeping of Almighty God.
The next item of this programme for a day is the acceptance of God’s plan for our life. “Teach me to do thy will.” No truth means more, if it is properly understood, than that God though about us before we were born, and had a distinct divine purpose in our creation. We read of John the Baptist that he was a man sent from God. His mission in the world was down among God’s long plans, part of the Messianic prophecy. But John was not exceptional among men in the regard. Our life and work may not be as important as his, but God had a plan for us, too, before we were born. Each one of us was made to attain a certain character to fill a certain place, and to do certain work. The noblest use we can make of our life is to fill out God’s plan for us. If we fail in this, no matter how great we may seem to be, we are not so great as we should have been if we had fulfilled God’s thought for us. Browning, who puts so many great Scriptural truths so forcefully, writes:
“Ere suns and moons could wax and wane,
Ere stars were thunder girt, or piled
The heavens, God thought on me, his child;
Ordained a life for me, arranged
Its circumstances every one
To the minutest.”
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