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The Secret of Gladness Part 1 of 4
From Timeless Grace Gems
J.R. Miller, 1899
From Timeless Grace Gems
J.R. Miller, 1899
"But let all who take refuge in You be glad; let them ever sing for joy!" Psalm 5:11
"I will be glad and rejoice in You; I will sing praise to Your name, O Most High." Psalm 9:2
"I will be glad and rejoice in Your love" Psalm 31:7
"Rejoice in the LORD and be glad, you righteous. Sing, all you who are upright in heart!" Psalm 32:11
"But may the righteous be glad and rejoice before God; may they be happy and joyful." Psalm 68:3
"Satisfy us in the morning with Your unfailing love, that we may sing for joy and be glad all our days." Psalm 90:14
"Worship the LORD with gladness; come before Him with joyful songs!" Psalm 100:2
"This is the day the LORD has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it!" Psalm 118:24
It is worth while to be a singing bird, in this world in which are so many harsh and discordant sounds and so many cries of pain. Even a bird's songs put a little more music into the air. It is yet more worth while to be a singing Christian, giving out notes of gladness amid earth's sorrows.
"Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!" Philippians 4:4. For most of us it is not easy to be always joyful; yet we should learn our lesson so well that whether amid circumstances of sorrow or of gladness — our song shall never be interrupted.
Joy is God's ideal for His children. He means for them to be sunny-faced and happy-hearted. He does not wish them to be heavy-hearted and sad. He has made the world full of beauty and full of music. The mission of the gospel is to start songs wherever it goes. Its keynote is joy — good tidings of great joy to all people. We are commanded to rejoice always.
This does not mean that the Christian's life is exempt from trouble, pain, and sorrow. The gospel does not give us a new set of conditions with the hard things left out. The Christian's home is not sheltered from life's storms — any more than the worldly man's home is. Sickness enters the circle where the voice of prayer is heard, with its hot breath — as well as the home where no heart adores and no knee bends before God. In the holiest home sanctuary, the loving group gathers about the bed of death, and there is sorrow of bereavement.
Nor is grief less poignant in the believer's case, than in that of the man who knows not Christ. Grace does not make . . .
love less tender,
the pang of affliction less sharp,
the sense of loss less keen, or
the feeling of loneliness less deep.
God does not give joy to His children by making them incapable of suffering. Divine grace makes the heart all the more tender, and the capacity for loving all the deeper; hence it increases rather than lessens the measure of sorrow when afflictions come.
But the joy of the Christian is something which lies too deep to be disturbed by the waves and tides of earthly trouble. It has its source in the very heart of God. Sorrow is not prevented by grace, but is swallowed up in the floods of heavenly joy. That was what Jesus meant when He talked to His disciples of joy just as He was about to go out to Gethsemane. He said their sorrow would be turned into joy, and that they would have a joy which the world could not take from them; that is, a joy which earth's deepest darkness could not put out. God's joy is not the absence of sorrow, but divine comfort overcoming sorrow — sunshine striking through the black clouds, transfiguring them! "You will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will be turned into joy!" John 16:20
This Is a Beautiful World
What is the secret of gladness? There are many things which help to make people glad. This is a beautiful world in which we live. When the work of creation was finished, God surveyed it and saw that it was very good. We do not think enough of what God has done for our pleasure in the way he has adorned this world, preparing it to be our home. He has spread loveliness everywhere. He has covered the fields with a luxuriance of vegetation. He has sown the earth with flowers. The wonderful variety in nature — mountain and valley, lake, river, and stream — gives an added charm to the marvelous beauty. Then over all this splendor God has thrown a vast vaulted roof of blue, in which, when night comes, instead of black darkness, thousands of star-lamps are hung to pour their soft, quiet radiance over us while we sleep.
Many Bible scholars say that when Jesus speaks of the many mansions in the Father's house, he does not refer to Heaven only, but means that this world is one of the mansions, and Heaven is another. Thus earth is one apartment of the Father's house. Surely it is beautiful enough, glorious enough, for this. No doubt Heaven will be more lovely, more resplendent, than earth; for sin has left its marrings here on everything. "The whole creation groans and travails together in pain." Earth's storms and earthquakes and floods and other calamitous events and occurrences, are in some mysterious way, a part of the fruit of sin. In the story of the fall we have hints of a sad change that came upon the earth in consequence of sin.
At least we know that the heavenly home will not have any of these sad things in it. Earth is not so beautiful nor so good as Heaven. Yet this is really one of the mansions of our Father's house in which we are now living, and its wondrous beauty and splendor ought to make us glad.
He who studies nature, and has an eye for its beauty — has found one of the secrets of gladness! There are scenes which have in them splendor enough to fill our hearts with rapture. He who has learned to see what is lovely in field and forest and landscape, has found an exhaustless resource of gladness!
This Is Our Father's World
Another thing that ministers to human gladness, is the goodness of God in providence. Not only is this a beautiful world, but the heavenly Father's care for his children appears in all its life. Jesus taught this when he pointed to the birds and the flowers, and said that even for these, his lowlier creatures, God cares. "Behold the birds of the Heaven, that they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns — and your heavenly Father feeds them. Are not you of much more value than they?" "Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin — yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these." The wondrous teaching which our Lord drew from this, was not merely that God feeds the birds and clothes the flowers, but that his care for his own children is far more tender and constant than his care for his ravens and his lilies. "Are you not of much more value than they?" How much more shall he care for you?
It ought to be a great source of gladness to us to know that as vast as this world is, our Father's care extends to its smallest events — to the weaving of a tiny flower's beautiful garments and the feeding of a troublesome sparrow — as well as to the movements of planets. "If I could not believe," said one, "that there is a thinking mind at the center of things — life would be intolerable to me." But the teaching of our Master is that a Father's heart beats in all nature and providence, and that a Father's love works in all events and experiences. On every leaf is written a covenant of divine love; on every flower and tuft of moss is found a pledge of divine faithfulness and care.
A little story-poem tells of a shepherd boy leading his sheep through a valley when a stranger, meeting him, and looking closely at his flock, said, "I see you have more white sheep than black."