It's never too late to begin the journey of the every-day of life to awaken and strengthen your soul.
The Every-Day of Life
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 illuminated 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, and 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, which have come so often before.
Yet it is the every-day which is really the best measure and the 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 an isolated 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-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, strife's, 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 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, always the center 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 the public.
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 great 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 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 humble duty and quiet cheerfulness, and pour out their heart's pure love, like fragrance, on all about them. Who will say that the uneventful and un-praised every-day of these humble ones--is not radiant in God'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 humble services of the every-days, the little faithfulnesses which fill long years.
There are millions of faithful lives that yet go un-praised among men and women. 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-We could lose out of this world, many of its few brilliant deeds--and not be much the poorer; but to lose the uncounted faithfulness 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.
The light of popular praise, at the most, can brighten only a day or two in a lifetime. 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 the 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 exaltation of the unusual and the phenomenal, 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 worthy. But if they could realize that it is by its moral value, that life's worth is measured--they would know that there is ten times more true nobleness 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 thoughtfulness, 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 clothing and beauty and comfort--is more glorious than the occasional startling events which 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, and that vast and glorious sky 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 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 would 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 oftentimes nothing of the brightness.
We cry out for visions of God, when, if our eyes were opened--we would see God's face mirrored in all about us! There is a legend of one who traveled 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.
God's glory is everywhere--if only we have eyes to see it. The humblest lot affords room enough for the noblest living. There is opportunity in the most common-place life for splendid heroism's, for higher than angelic ministries, for fullest and clearest revealing's 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."
We can make our days radiant and beautiful, and 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.
