The Every-Day of Life
u Place a spray in thy belt, or a rose on thy stand, When thou settest thyself to a commonplace seam; Its beauty will brighten the work in thy hand, Its fragrance will sweeten each dream.
When the task thou performest is irksome and long, Or thy brain is perplexed by doubt or by fear,
Fling open the window and let in the song God hath taught to the birds for thy cheer.”
Perhaps the every-day of life is not so interesting as are some of the bright particular days. It is apt to be somewhat monotonous. It is just like a great many other days. It has nothing special to mark it. It wears no star on its brow. It is illumined by no brilliant event. It bears no record of any brave or noble deed done. It is not made memorable by the coming of any new experience into the life, — a new hope, a new friendship, a new joy, a new success. It is not even touched with sorrow, and made to stand out ever after among the days sad with the memory of loss. It is only a plain, common day, with just the same old wearisome routine of tasks and duties and happenings that have come so often before.
Yet it is the every-day that is really the best measure and test of life. Anybody can do well on special occasions. Anybody can be good on Sundays. Anybody can be bright and cheerful in exhilarating society. Anybody can be sweet amid gentle influences. Anybody can make a solitary self-denial for some conspicuous object, or do a generous deed under the impulse of some unusual emotion. Anybody can do a heroic thing once or twice in a lifetime.
These are beautiful things. They shine like lofty peaks above life’s plains. But the ordinary attainment of the common days is a truer index of the life, a truer measure of its character and value, than are the most striking and brilliant things of its exalted moments. It requires more strength to be faithful in the ninety and nine commonplace duties, when no one is looking on, when there is no special motive to stir the soul to its best effort, than it does in the one duty, which by its unusual importance, or by its conspicuousness, arouses enthusiasm for its own doing. It is a great deal easier to be brave in one stern conflict which calls for heroism, in which large interests are involved, than to be brave in the thousand little struggles of the common days, for which it seems scarcely worth while to put on the armor. It is very much less a task to be good-natured under one great provocation, in the presence of others, than it is to keep sweet temper month after month of ordinary days, amid the frictions, strifes, and petty annoyances and cares of home-life, or of business life.
Thus it is that one’s every-day life is a surer revealer of character than one’s public acts. There are men who are magnificent when they appear on great occasions, — wise, eloquent, masterly, — but who are almost utterly unendurable in their fretfulness, unreasonableness, irascibility, and all manner of selfish disagreeableness in the privacy of their own homes, to those to whom they ought to show all of love’s gentleness and sweetness. There are women, too, who shine with wondrous brilliancy in society, sparkling in conversation, winning in manner, the centre ever of admiring groups, resistless in their charms, but who, in their every-day life, in the presence of only their own households, are the dullest and wearisomest of mortals. No doubt in these cases the common every-day, unflattering as it is, is a truer expression of the inner life than the hour or two of greatness or graciousness in the blaze of publicity.
On the other hand, there are men who are never heard of on the street, whose names never appear in the newspapers, who do no conspicuous things, whose lives have no glittering peaks towering high, and yet the level plain of their years is rich in its beauty and its fruitfulness of love. There are women who do not shine in society, who are the idols of no drawing-rooms, who attract no throngs of admirers about them by resistless charms, but who, in their own quiet sheltered world, do their daily tasks with faithfulness, move in ways of lowly duty and unselfish serving with sweet patience and quiet cheerfulness, and pour out their heart’s pure love, like fragrance, on all about them. Who will say that the uneventful and unpraised every-day of these lowly ones is not radiant in heaven’s sight, though they
“Leave no memorial but a world made
A little better by their lives “?
It is in the every-day of life that nearly all the world’s best work is done. The tall mountain peaks lift their glittering crests into the clouds, and win attention and admiration; but it is in the great valleys and broad plains that the harvests grow and the fruits ripen, on which the millions of earth feed their hunger. So it is not from the few conspicuous deeds of life that the blessings chiefly come which make the world better, sweeter, happier; but from the countless lowly ministries of the every-days, the little faithfulnesses that fill long years.
“‘What shall I do to be forever known? ’
‘Thy duty ever.*1 * This did full many who yet sleep unknown.’
4 Oh, never, never! Thinkest thou perchance that they remain unknown
Whom thou know’st not? By angel trumps in heaven their praise is blown,
Divine their lot.7”
A tender and beautiful story of lowly faithfulness is told by a late writer. It was on one of the Orkney Islands where a great rock — Lonely Rock — dangerous to vessels, juts out into the sea. In a fisherman’s hut on this island coast, one night long ago, sat a young girl, busy at her spinning-wheel, looking out upon the dark and driving clouds. All night she toiled and watched, and when morning came, one fishing-boat, her father’s, was missing. Half a mile from the cottage her father’s body was found, washed upon the shore. His boat had been wrecked on Lonely Rock.
The girl watched her father’s body after the manner of her people, till it was laid in the grave. Then when night came she arose and set the candle in her casement, that the fishermen out on the waves might see. All night long she sat in the little room spinning, trimming the candle when its light grew dim. After that, in the wild storms of winter, in the quiet calm of summer, through driving mists, illusive moonlight, and solemn darkness, that coast was never one night without the light of that one little candle. As many hanks of yarn as she had spun before for her daily bread she spun still, and one more, to pay for her nightly candle. The men on the sea, however far out they had gone, were sure always of seeing that quiet light shining to give them safe guidance. Who can tell how many hearts were cheered and lives saved from peril and death by that tiny flame which love and devotion and self-sacrifice kept there through the long years? This is but a leaf out of the story of millions of faithful lives that yet go unpraised among men. The things they do are not the same in all, but the spirit is the same. These humble ones keep the light of love burning where it guides and cheers and blesses others. By the simple beauty of their own lives, by their quiet deeds of self-sacrifice, by the songs of their cheerful faith, and by the ministries of their helpful hands, they make one little spot of this sad earth brighter and happier.
Lowell’s picture of womanly grace and faithfulness is very beautiful, and illustrates the glory of the commonplace: —
“She doeth little kindnesses
Which most leave undone or despise;
For naught that sets our heart at ease,
And giveth happiness or peace,
Is low esteemed in her eyes.
She hath no scorn of common things,
And though she seems of other birth,
Round us her heart entwines and clings,
And patiently she folds her wings
To tread the humble paths of earth.
Blessing she is. God made her so.
And deeds of week-day holiness
Fall from her noiseless as the snow;
Nor hath she ever chanced to know
That aught were easier than to bless.”
We could lose out of this world’s life many of its few brilliant deeds and not be much the poorer, but to lose the uncounted faithfulnesses of the millions of common lives would leave this world a cold and dreary place indeed in which to live.
There ought to be both cheer and instruction in these glimpses of the glory and blessing of the every-day of life. Most of us can expect to do only plain and commonplace things. Only a few people can become famous. Only a rare deed now and then can have its honor proclaimed from the hilltops. Only a day or two in a lifetime, at the most, can be brightened by the light of popular praise. It is a comfort to reflect that it is the common life of the every-day that in God’s sight is the truest and best, and that does the most to bless the world. Many of us need the inspiration which comes from this revealing. The glamour of the conspicuous is apt to deceive us. There is so much glorifying of the unusual and the phenomenal in life, that we come to think the common as of but small importance. People whose days are all alike in their dull routine, feel that their life is scarcely worth living. If only they could do something startling or sublime, or even sensational, to lift them out of the dreary commonplace of their every-days, they would feel that they were living nobly and worthily. But if they could realize that it is by its moral value that life’s worth is measured, they would know that ordinarily there is ten times more true glory in long unbroken years of simple faithfulness, without distinction or conspicuousness at any point, than there is in any unusual brilliancy in an occasional day or hour.
The every-day of God’s care and revealing is also more to us than his day of wonder-working. The miracles of Christ were not half so rich in blessing for men as his common days with their sweet life, their simple teachings, their ceaseless ministries of good, their compassion, their thoughtf ulness, comfort, and helpfulness. Daily providence, with its unrecognized wonders of sunshine and air and rain and snow and heat and cold, and its unfailing gifts of food and raiment and beauty and comfort, is more glorious than the occasional startling events that seem to unveil the very throne of God.
Luther wrote one day in a dark period of the Reformation, when even the boldest were trembling:” I recently saw two miracles. You listen to hear of something startling, some great light burning in the heavens, some angelic visitation, some unusual occurrence; but you hear only this: ‘As I was at my window, I saw the stars, the sky, and that vast and glorious firmament in which the Lord has placed them. I could nowhere discover the columns on which the Master has supported this immense vault, and yet the heavens did not fall, And here was the other miracle: ‘I beheld clouds hanging above me like a vast sea. I could neither perceive ground on which they reposed, nor cords by which they were suspended, and yet they did not fall upon me, ’
If we had eyes to see the glory of the Lord in the every-day of divine providence, we should find light and comfort a thousand times where now we walk in darkness with sorrow uncomforted. The glory of the Lord is everywhere. It shines in the lowliest flower, in the commonest grass-blade, in every drop of dew, in every snowflake. It burns in every bush and tree. It lives in every sunbeam, in every passing cloud. It flows around us in the- goodness of each bright day, in the shelter and protection of every dark night. Yet how few of us see this glory. We walk amid the divine splendors, and see ofttimes nothing of the brightness. Says Mrs. Browning: —
“Earth’s crammed with heaven, And every common bush afire with God; But only he who sees takes off his shoes; The rest sit round it, and pluck blackberries.”
We cry out for visions of God, when, if our eyes were opened, we should see God’s face mirrored in all about us. There is a legend of one who travelled many years and over many lands, seeking God, but seeking in vain. Then, returning home, and taking up her daily duties, God appeared to her in these, showing her that he was ever close beside her. Whittier, in a beautiful poem, “The Chapel of the Hermits,” represents one seeking the Holy Land, and at last learning that he needed not rock nor sand nor storied stream of morning-land, to reveal Christ: —
“The heavens are glassed in Merrimac; What more could Jordan render back?
We lack but open eye and ear
To find the Orient’s marvels here;
The still, small voice in autumn’s hush,
Yon maple wood the burning bush.
Henceforth my heart shall sigh no more For olden time and holier shore; God’s love and blessing, then and there, Are now and here and everywhere.”’
So there is glory everywhere in life, if only we have eyes to see it. The humblest lot affords room enough for the noblest living. There is opportunity in the most commonplace life for splendid heroisms, for higher than angelic ministries, for fullest and clearest revealings of God. “Every day,” says Goethe, “is a vessel into which a great deal may be poured, if we will actually fill it up; that is, with thoughts and feelings, and their expression into deeds as elevated and amiable as we can reach to.” The days are well enough: it is with ourselves whether we make them radiant and beautiful, whether we fill them with life. A mere dreary treadmill round — waking, eating, drinking, walking, working, sleeping — is not enough to make any life worthy; we must put the glory of love, of best effort, of sacrifice, of prayer, of upward-looking, and heavenward-reaching, into the dull routine of our life’s every-day, and then the most burdensome and uneventful life will be made splendid with the glory of God.