Growing in One's Place: Providence
11 /“ANY people imagine that they could live very much better if their circumstances were different. In their failure to live a noble and worthy life they find comfort in laying the blame on some infelicity or hardness in their lot. This is really very foolish. For one thing, it does no good. Blaming circumstances will not change them. After all, they are our circumstances, and we must live out our life in the midst of them. Besides, God has in his providence put us just where we find ourselves, and unless we know better than he we must conclude that we are in the right place — at least, that it is quite possible for us to live a true Christian life where we are.
“Thou camst not to thy place by accident: It is the very place God meant for thee; And shouldst thou then small scope for action see,
102 7^ HIS STEPS.
Do not for this give room to discontent, Nor let the time thou owest to God be spent In idly dreaming how thou mightest be.”
God does not merely choose for us the place where we can have the most pleasant time with the least friction and the fewest weights and encumbrances. Life on the earth is a school, and he puts us where we shall be trained the best. The easier place might be more comfortable, but the harder place does the more for us — makes the more out of us.
Some people think that if they could get away from others and live alone they would be better Christians. Men irritate them, tempt them, stir up the evil that is in them, excite them. But men do not grow best in solitude and apart from others. The goodness that is good only because there is no friction, no provocation, nothing to try it, is scarcely worth the having. Life needs life to school it and develop it. The old monks were wrong in their idea of Christian living when they supposed that they could reach a higher state of holiness by withdrawing from men and dwelling alone. God’s plan is to set the solitary in families rather than to separate families into solitariness. We all need to be sometimes alone. There should be hours when we enter into our closet and shut the door that we may look in upon our own hearts and hold communion with God, but the closet is not to be our abiding-place.
“Hark, hark! a voice amid the quiet intense!
It is thy duty waiting thee without.
Rise from thy knees in hope, the half of doubt; A hand doth pull thee: it is Providence: Open thy door straightway and get thee hence;
Go forth into the tumult and the shout;
Work, love, with workers, lovers, all about. Of noise alone is born the inward sense Of silence, and from action springs alone The inward knowledge of true love and faith.”
We all owe duties to others. To live only for one’s self, though the aspiration be purely for holiness, is contrary to the spirit of true discipleship. Our duties to others are as manifold and as diversified as the varying phases and conditions of life’s reciprocal relations. We are debtors to all men, far and near. God wants us on the earth to fulfill these duties. This is the way he wants us to serve him, not by pure devotion apart from human relationships. The men who in olden days left society and fled to the cloister simply ran away from their chief mission. We are not left in this world after conversion merely to pray and praise: God wants us to be useful, to do his work, to run his errands, to help his needy, suffering ones, to trpi’^ children for his service, to fight his battles.
“What are we set on earth for? Say to toil, Nor seek to leave thy tending of the vines For all the heat o’ the day, till it declines And death’s mild curfew shall from work assoil. God did anoint thee with his odorous oil To wrestle, not to reign....
So others shall Take patience, labor, to their heart and hand From thy hand and thy heart and thy brave cheer. And God’s grace fructify through thee to all. The least flower with a brimming cup may stand And share its dewdrop with another near.”
But it is not alone for the sake of others that God has appointed us to live out our life among men rather than apart and alone: it is for our own sake as well. We grow best among other lives. It may seem to us that if we could get away from society we should escape many temptations and be able to live nearer to God. But we would then miss the blessing which comes from struggle and victory. Heaven and its honor’s are for “him that overcometh,” Not to enter the struggle is to fail of the white robe and palm of the victor. The best things in life are not found along flowery walks, but in the fields of conflict. There are qualities in us that can be developed only in struggle. To find easy places away from the strife of battle is to lose the discipline that makes grand character.
All relative duties are means of grace. The mediaeval monk who fled from the world to escape its toils and cares in order to enjoy unbroken communion with God lost far more than he gained. He cultivated only one side of his nature, and that but imperfectly; for the two classes of duties — to God and to man — are so intertwined that neither can be performed while the other is neglected. We cannot love God and not love our fellow-men; we cannot serve God and not serve one another.
Sometimes we think that if we could get away from business cares and household burdens and social obligations we could be better Christians. It seems to us that these duties are not favorable to spiritual culture, and that we could be holier and could live more as Christ lived if we were freed from their exacting and absorbing claims. But this is a mistake. It is in these very common duties that the powers of life are best developed. God puts the new life into our hearts, but we must work it out into strength and beauty. And there is no way to do this but by exercise. If we would develop the love of our hearts, we must love actual people; the sentiment must take practical form; the seed-germ must be cultivated; and for this no mere cloister-culture will do. If we would learn patience, there is no school but in experiences that require us to exercise patience. Christ said that rank among disciples is won by serving, that he who serves most is chief: we can gain this spiritual eminence only by filling our place in the midst of human needs and sufferings. The serving must be real serving of actual living people; no fine sentiment alone will exalt us. Good feelings and dispositions of whatever kind can become part of the fibre of life only when they are wrought out in actual experience. Spiritual graces cannot be cultivated in the abstract. Character is more than sentiment: it is sentiment incarnated, grown into life and strength and reality.
These simple illustrations show that, instead of 1>eing hindrances to the development of our Christian life and character, our relative duties are in the largest measure helpful. To tear ourselves out of our place among men in order to get rid of these duties is to leave whole fields of our nature uncultivated and many of the richest possibilities of our regenerated life undeveloped. The common duties that the daily round brings to our hand, although they may seem to be far from spiritual in their influence, and may seem to draw us off from communion with God by keeping us absorbed in and occupied with earthly tasks, are to us really not hindrances, but rich means of grace. We grow best Godward when we are serving best man ward in Christ’s name and for his sake.
Therefore, in the cultivation of the Christian life, we can do nothing better than attend with fidelity and diligence to the duties that belong to us in our varied relations, ^yherever we find ourselves when we start as disciples, we should at once begin to meet the requirements of our place. The head of a family should take up promptly, as the first biddings of his new Master, his duties as a husband and as a father, performing them with new faithfulness and tenderness and with the new motive in his heart of love to Christ. On becoming a Christian a child in the parents’ home should accept as the heavenly” Father’s business ‘’ for him at present his duties of obedience and honor to his earthly father and mother. And it should be a wonderful inspiration, if the homelimits seem too narrow for the aspirations of youth, to remember that for thirty years Jesus found scope enough, without chafing or discontent or the dwarfing of his powers, for his blessed divine-human life, in doing a child’s simple part in a peasant-home. The will of God for brothers and sisters beginning to follow Christ is to render to one another all the sweet and helpful service of patient, unselfish love that belongs to their sacred relationship.
We are called to walk with God, but not ordinarily by withdrawing from among men. We are to walk with God in the place to which he has assigned us. We are called to be holy, but holiness is not some vague, nebulous thing, some abstract condition of soul attained apart from common practical life. Holiness is obedience to duty, and no one can be holy and neglect the service to his fellow-men which his relationships impose upon him. God plants the trees in his orchards, and lie knows where each will grow the best — in the quiet valley or on the bleak mountain; and where he has planted them they should grow in quiet contentment.