| The Best Things in Life |
Chapter 19 |
Page 4 |
A little child was left in the arms of a young father by a dying mother. He was thankful. “Her beautiful mother will live again in her, and I shall be comforted,” he said. He lavished his love upon her. But the child developed spinal disease, and grew to be sadly misshapen. The fathers’ disappointment was pitiful. He drew himself away from the ill-favored child, neglecting her. At length the child died, and as the father sat in his room in the evening, thinking of her sad, short life, he fell asleep, and a radiant vision appeared before him. It was his daughter, straight and beautiful, more beautiful than her lovely mother ever had been. He held out his arms yearningly, and she drew near to him, and knelt, and laid her head against his breast. They talked long of things in their inmost souls, and he understood that this was his daughter in reality. This was the child as she was in her inner life, the spirit child, what she was as God and angels saw her. He never had been able to see her in this radiant loveliness, however, because of the physical deformity which disease had wrought, thus hiding from his blinded eyes the real splendour of her sweet, lovely girlhood. With great tenderness he laid his hand on her head, saying, “My daughter!” Then the vision vanished – it was only a dream. But in the dream there was a revealing of the truth about her. This was indeed the child over whose disfigurement he was so bitterly disappointed. This was the being that had dwelt in that crooked body. This was what she was now in her immortal body.
So we begin to see that St. Paul spoke truly when he said that since we are immortal, and because we are immortal, we should abound in the work of the Lord – “for as much as ye know that your labour is not vain in the Lord.” Those who touch children’s lives these days with divine benedictions are putting upon them marks of beauty which never shall fade out. Be not impatient of results. The seed you sowed yesterday may not come to ripe harvest today or tomorrow, but God’s years are long.
“The good we hoped to gain has failed us–well,
We do not see the ending–and the boon
May wait us down the ages–who can tell? –
Or bless us amply soon.
“In God’s eternal plan, a month, a year,
Is but an hour of some slow April day
Holding the germs of what we hope or fear,
Too blossom far away.”
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