By J.R. Miller
"Because they have no changes; therefore they do not fear God." Psalm 55:19
Many of life's worst dangers are unsuspected. Where we suppose there is good and blessing--there is hidden peril. Disease lurks oftentimes in a soft, still, dreamy atmosphere--which we think delicious with its sweet odors; while the chill, rough, wintry blast, from which we shrink as too severe--comes laden with life and health. Most of us think of a life of ease, leisure, and luxury--as the most highly favored lot, one to be envied. We are not apt to think of it as one of danger. Yet there is no doubt that a life of rugged toil, hardship, and self-denial, which we took upon as almost a misfortune, is far safer than one of ease.
It is said that there was laid one morning on the minister's pulpit a little folded paper which, when opened, contained the words, "The prayers of this congregation are requested for a person who is growing rich." It certainly seemed a strange request for prayer. If it had been for a person who misfortune or calamity had become suddenly poor; or for a person who was suffering in some great adversity; or for one who was in sorrow and distress, who had met with sore loss or bereavement, every heart would at once have felt deep sympathy. Such experiences as these are thought to be trying and perilous ones, in which people need special grace. We instinctively pray for those who are in trouble. We think these need our prayers. We regard such conditions as fraught with danger. But to ask prayers for a person who was growing rich, no doubt too many people in the congregation, seemed incongruous. Where they not indeed specially favored? Were they not receiving peculiar blessing? Should it not rather have been a request for thanksgiving for this person's success?
Yet when we open our Bible we find that the experience of growing rich is indeed set down as one full of spiritual peril. It was Jesus who said, "How hard it is for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!" And Paul said, "Those who want to be rich fall into temptation, a trap, and many foolish and harmful desires, which plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all evil." There is no doubt that when a Christian is prospering and growing rich, is indeed a time when he needs the prayers of God's people, whether they are requested and offered for him or not.
True, this is an experience, which but few people are known ever to have dreaded. It is not often that people are heard to say, that they are afraid to get rich. It is not the popular impression, that wealth is a condition in which danger lurks. Yet thousands of souls have been lost in the valley of gold! Countless men have buried their manhood in the fabrics of earthly prosperity, which their hands have reared. Many a man's envied fortune, is in God's sight, but the splendid mausoleum of his soul. We do indeed need the prayers of God's people if we are growing rich, that our hearts may be kept warm and soft; that the fires may not be allowed to go out on the secret altar; that we may continue humble and simple with all divine simplicity; that we may be held ever near to the heart of Christ, and that we may be sheltered by the love of God from all the insidious dangers and hurtful influences that belong to the experience of growing rich.
Another kindred condition, which, according to the Scriptures, hides an unsuspected peril, is one of unbroken prosperity. "Because they have no changes; therefore they do not fear God." Psalms 55:19. Those who are thus described, are free from trouble. They do not suffer from adversity, from misfortune, from losses, from disappointments. They move along, year after year, without any breaks in their human happiness.
It is not usual that such an experience as this, is regarded as one of danger. Indeed, we naturally consider such people peculiarly favored. For example, here is a home, which has gone on for a long time without saddening changes. Business has been prosperous, and the circumstances of the household have become more and more easy. Additions have been made to the comforts and luxuries enjoyed in the home. There have been no long, serious illnesses, causing pain and anxiety, and draining the resources of the family. There have been no deaths, breaking the happy circle of loved ones.
No one naturally looks upon such a household as in any peculiar danger. The neighbors do not have special prayer requested for it in the church. Friends do not feel distressed about its condition. Yet there is no doubt that insidious moral dangers do lurk in such an experience of unbroken prosperity.
Oftentimes it is true that God has less and less welcome in such a home. The fires burn low and then go out upon the altar. The voice of prayer dies out of the home. Christ is lost out of the household life. And beneath the bright earthly prosperity, God sees spiritual death.
The same is true of individual life. Unbroken worldly prosperity is the bane of spiritual good. For one thing, it hinders growth in spiritual knowledge and experience. There are truths which can be learned better in darkness, than in light. We would never see the stars--if there were no night to blot out for the time the glare of the day. And there are truths in the Bible, which are perhaps never learned in the brightness of human joy. There are divine promises, which by their very nature are invisible in the noonday of gladness, hiding away like stars in the light, and revealing themselves only when it grows dark around us. The deeper, richer meaning of many a word of Scripture, is learned only amid life's painful changes.
There are also developments in spiritual growth, which cannot come in time of unbroken prosperity. The artist was trying to improve on a dead mother's picture. But the son said, "No; don't take out the wrinkles; just leave them--every one. It wouldn't be my mother if all the wrinkles were gone."
It was well enough, the son said, for young people who had never known a care to have faces free from wrinkles; but when one has lived seventy years of love and service and self-forgetfulness, it would be like trying to cover up the tracks of one's realest life, to take out the marks. The very beauty of that old face was in the wrinkles and the lines, which told of what her brave heart, and strong hands had done for love's sake.
There is a blessing in such a life. But in the life of ease and luxury, which many of us experience, especially in woman's lives, there hide sore perils.
Another of the unsuspected perils of "no changes"--is in the lessening of our dependence upon God. While all things go well with us, and there are no breaks in the flow of blessings--we are apt to forget that all our good gifts come from our Father's hand. It is a sad hour in any life when consciousness of the need of God fades out of it. It seems pleasant to be able to go on, making plans of our own, and carrying them out without check or defeat. We like to be victorious. We like to say that we are masters of our circumstances, which we make all things serve us, that we turn obstacles into stepping-stones, climbing continually upward upon them. But a little thought would show the peril which hides in this having always one's own way. It is not our own will--but God's will which leads to perfect character and blessedness. Unless therefore, we are doing always God's will, filling out his plan for our life, the unbrokenness of prosperity is not an unmixed good.
Most of us need to be baffled oftentimes in our schemes, to be defeated in our projects, to have our plans fail, to be compelled to yield to a stronger will. In no other way can the sense of dependence and of obligation to God, be kept warm in the heart. If we always get our own way, we are apt, being human, to grow willful, proud, and rebellious.
Quiet trust in God and unswerving obedience and submission to his will, can be learned at least by most of us, only through long discipline and much thwarting of our own will. It is a sore misfortune to any of us--if in having our own way we forget God and cease to love and follow Christ. Says Farrar--and we had better read the words twice: "God's judgments--it may be the very sternest and most irremediable of them--come, many a time, in the guise, not of affliction--but of immense earthly prosperity and ease."
Another unsuspected peril of prosperity lies in its easy circumstances, which make toil and severe exertion necessary. It is the young who are most exposed to this danger. They are not required to work to provide for themselves. All that they need comes to them without effort of their own. Such young people are envied by their companions and neighbors, who have to work hard to earn their own bread and to win whatever opportunities for improvement they may gain. The latter do not suspect that there is any peril lurking in the easy condition of those they envy. They suppose it is in their own poverty and hardship, and in the necessity in their life for pinching economy and unceasing toil. They do not dream that theirs is really the safer condition, that there is a blessing in work and self-denial and care--and that there is always danger in ease and luxury.
The story of the outcome of life, shows that early disadvantages, instead of being a hindrance to the development of godly character, are helpful and stimulating. Most people are naturally indolent, indisposed to exertion, needing to be impelled to it by the pressure of necessity. No greater blessing can come to young people than to be compelled to endure hardship, to bear the yoke in their youth, to have their demanding tasks to perform, their heavy burdens to carry, their responsibilities to meet, their own way to make.
Another hidden peril of continuous prosperity, is the dropping of God out of the life-plan. The years pass without break, and all things go on well and prosperously, until at length we begin to grow content with earth, and lose our hunger, our homesickness for our heavenly abode. Spiritual things begin to have less and less interest for us, and power over us. We grow materialistic, if not in our creed, yet in our life. Our souls begin to cleave to the dust, no longer flying aloft like the eagle--but groveling like the worm!
This is a most serious peril. A picture, which has no sky in it, and is without the highest beauty. "It is the horizon which gives dignity to the foreground." A life without sky in it--is most unworthy and incomplete.
A person who sees only bonds and stocks and deeds, bales of goods and blocks of houses, stores and factories and machinery and chimney tops--with no gleams above and beyond all these, of stars and blue skies and a Heavenly Father's face--is not living as an immortal being should live. There is no sky in this person's vision of life. This world is very beautiful in its place and God means us to enjoy it and do faithful, earnest, and beautiful work in it; but it is only one little part of our Father's house. When in our thinking, planning, and doing--we do not look beyond this world, we are not living worthy of our high calling. When we lose the sky out of our life-vision, the glory fades from it. The only secret of spiritual safety in prosperous times--is in keeping the eye fixed on heaven.
These are a few illustrations of the truth that the best things of life are oftentimes found in conditions which are not thought to be kindly or congenial, while in conditions regarded by men and women as exceptionally favorable and desirable--there often lurks subtle perils to life's highest good. This truth lets in strong light upon some of God's ways with his people. He does not allow them to be hurt, even by temporal blessings. He breaks the prosperity, that its bane may not leave poison in our lives. He gives us adverse changes, that we may not forget him--but that the consciousness of our dependence upon him may never fade out. He thwarts us when we would let our own folly rule us; and baffles us when our selfish ambitions would only work our ruin. He breaks into our plans and schemes, with the resistless requirements of his own will--to save us from the willfulness, which would destroy us. He lets us have hardship and toil--that our lives may be disciplined into spiritual strength and energy.
These are not pleasant interferences, for they break into our cherished hopes, and cut oftentimes into our heart! But they are blessings, which some day in the clearer light of eternity--we shall recognize, and for which we shall give thanks.
