By J.R. Miller
One of the problems of true Christian living, is to pass through the hurtful experiences of life, without being hurt by them. We often think of the seriousness of dying--but it is really a far more serious matter to live, than to die. When one has lived well--dying is easy! But life is always hard. It never ceases to mean toil, struggle, self-abnegation, resistance to wrong, earnest effort. Many people are hurt, too, in these experiences. They do not pass through them victoriously. They are wounded in life's battles. They are crushed by life's burdens. Life's antagonisms injure and scar them. They lose something of the sweetness and gentleness of their heart, in life's hard struggles. Life's harsh and sore experiences, leave their spirit embittered. Life's sorrows, break the music of their joy.
However, there is a way of relating ourselves to the hurtful incidents of life through which we must pass--so that none of them shall harm us. There is no power in sorrow, pain, temptation, or injustice, which can hurt us, unless in some way we fail in our own duty in meeting the experience. No one can harm us--but ourselves.
When Jesus was committing His disciples to His Father's care, as He was about to leave them in this world, His prayer for them was, "I am not praying that You take them out of the world--but that You protect them from the evil." He did not say evils--there is but one evil. He did not ask that they should be kept from struggle, from suffering, from earthly loss, or from wrong or persecution. These are not evils; in themselves they have no power to hurt the Christian's true life. The only evil in all the world--is sin. So long as we do not sin, we have not been actually hurt by any experience. Our body may be mangled, cut to pieces, or burned in the flames; but so long as we do not sin in thought, feeling, or act--we have received no trace of real harm.
Just before his martyrdom, Paul wrote from his prison, these words of sublime confidence, "The Lord will rescue me from every evil work--and will bring me safely into His heavenly kingdom." He did not mean that the Lord would deliver him from the cruelty of Nero, from the horrors of prison life, from the suffering, from a violent death; but that in whatever he might have to endure--no actual harm could come to him. The Lord would bring him through all his experience, with life unhurt, to the heavenly gates.
There is a wonderful verse in the little Epistle of Jude which reads, "Unto Him who is able to guard you from stumbling, and to set you before the presence of His glory without blemish in exceeding joy... be glory." No matter how full of danger the world may be, how on every hand sin may work, how wicked men and evil spirits may seek our destruction--yet there is a power which can keep us through all these perils without a trace of hurt, guarding us ever from stumbling, preserving us from all tarnishing of the soul, and presenting us at last without blemish before God!
It becomes a very practical question--how we may meet life, so that we shall receive no harm from its hurtful experiences.
Consider sorrow, for instance. There is a prevalent impression that sorrow is at least a safe condition, that those who endure it are thereby brought nearer to God, and that some good or blessing always comes from the bitterness of grief. But this impression is not correct. Sorrow is an experience of great spiritual peril. Many gentle lives are irreparably hurt by it. Too often in the experience of grief--faith's vision of Christ is obscured, fellowship with God is interrupted, Christian energy is paralyzed, and the heart grows bitter!
Yet it is possible to pass through sorrow--without being harmed by it. One's heart may be kept sweet--under all the brackish tides of grief, like the fresh water spring beside the sea, over which the salt floods pour twice each day--but which emerges from each burial, as fresh as ever. All depends upon the way we relate ourselves to our sorrow.
If we meet it without submission, with rebellious feeling; or hopelessly, shutting out the stars; or without faith, letting go the hand of Christ and forgetting the Divine love and grace--only harm can come to us from it. But if we meet it with reverent trust, knowing that we are in God's hands, and resting there in quietness and confidence, singing while we suffer--we deprive sorrow of its power to harm us--and compel it to yield us rich blessing instead. Acquiescence to the will and way of God, takes the bitterness out of trouble, and preserves in the heart--the gentleness of Christ and the peace of God through the darkest hours.
Or consider temptation. When we think of the malignity of the Evil One, the fierceness and persistence of the assaults which are made upon our soul, and the insidiousness of sin--it is no wonder that we sometimes cry out in alarm, and ask how it is possible to pass through this world and keep our life unspotted. Yet it is possible. There is a way of meeting the greatest temptation, so that no trace of harming shall be left.
No power of evil can force open the door of our heart, or enter--unless we open to it with our own hand. As Luther somewhere says, we cannot keep the birds from flying about our head--but we can prevent them from building their nests in our hair. We may endure the utmost pressure of temptation, and not be hurt. Being tempted is not sin--but the moment we yield in any degree, we have received harm. Yet it is not necessary that we should yield; for Christ has overcome the world, and through Him--the weakest of us may be more than conquerors.
There is a wonderful word of Scripture which speaks of a Christian's life, as being hid with Christ in God. What a blessed place this is--how warm and safe, how impregnably sheltered! Men seem ambitious to rush into the world where they must meet peril. But it is wiser far to avoid the danger of sin--unless duty calls us to go into it. It is thus that the Master taught us to live in this world, when He bade us pray, "Lead us not into temptation--but deliver us from evil." We ought to fear the evil, and should be willing to meet temptation only when it comes in the path of duty in which God leads us. It is better to seek to dwell in the secret place of the Most High--than out in the streets amid life's dangers.
The same is true of unjust treatment. There is a great deal of unlovingness in the world. There are some people whose life is one long record of endured wrong or injustice. There are few, if any, who at some time do not have to suffer at the hand of others. How to meet these experiences is one of the most important questions we have to consider. There are two aspects of it: What is our duty toward others? What does the law of love require? Here the teaching of the New Testament is very plain. We are to cherish the spirit of forgiveness. We are to return kindness--for unkindness, and good--for evil. "If your enemy is hungry--feed him; if he is thirsty--give him something to drink."
Then there is an aspect of the question, which concerns our own inner spiritual life. We must see to it that we are not hurt in our soul, in the depths of our being, in our life and character--by wrongs, injustices, or unkindnesses which others do to us. The wounding which one may inflict upon our body by a blow--is not all the injury which may result. If, when we are struck--we become angry, and permit the anger to grow into resentment and bitterness and a desire for revenge--we have now received a second hurt--to our soul, which is far more serious than the bodily injury inflicted by the blow.
Here it is true again, that nothing can cause one damage, except one's self. One is never a real sufferer, but by his own faults. Only sin can actually do us harm. So long, therefore, as we keep our heart free from bitterness while enduring injustice or unkind treatment, we remain unharmed and beyond the reach of harm.
No other one ever suffered such wrongs as did Jesus; but the hurts He bore--never reached His soul, left no woundings there. When He was reviled, He reviled not again--but kept forgiveness in His heart. He gave love--for hate. They pierced His hands with nails; but the only cry the pain wrung from Him--was a prayer for His enemies. The blood from the cruel wounds--became the blood of redemption. Paul is another example of the powerlessness of hatred and injury to harm a soul. He endured untold suffering, was beaten, stoned, imprisoned, tortured; but you will search the records in vain--for one word of bitterness or resentment. His heart remained sweet, through the worst that human hate and rage could do!
That is an important lesson, and one that every Christian should learn. We are always in danger of allowing ourselves to be embittered by injustice or cruel treatment. When we have sought to do good to others--and our love has been despised, rejected, and cast away; when we have suffered and sacrificed in vain, receiving only ingratitude and unkindness, in return for love's most sacred gifts, freely lavished--it is easy to permit our heart to lose its tenderness, and to grow hard and misanthropic. Then it is, that unjust treatment has wrought damage to our spirit--that we have sinned against our own soul. The problem of Christian living is to pass through any and every possible experience of pain, loss, sorrow, temptation, or unjust treatment--uninjured, with spirit sweet, peaceful, wholesome, loving, and unimpaired.
The secret is, abiding in Christ, with Christ abiding in us. We cannot keep ourselves; nothing less than the Divine keeping is able to guard us from stumbling, and to shelter us from the hurt of sin. The old Scripture promise runs, "You will keep him in perfect peace--whose mind is stayed on You." Our only part is the staying of our mind on God, in His love, close to His heart; God's part is the keeping. It was the promise of the Master, that His disciples would take up serpents, and, if they drank any deadly thing--that it should in not hurt them. This promise stands for all who are in living relations with Christ.
