Songful Acceptance of God's Will
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Dear friend,
I am glad to write you, for it seems to do you good. It has been a great pleasure to me to come into your life and add a little strength. Perhaps I have already quoted to you Miss Dickinson's lines in which she says that if we can help one fainting, into his nest again — we shall not live in vain. I suppose the suggestion came from the story of Mr. Lincoln, who, finding one day in the grass beside a hedgerow a young bird, picked it up gently and walked along the hedge until he found the nest out of which the bird had fallen, and then put it back into the nest again. It was a beautiful thing for the great man to do. Even to help back into its place, a bird which had fallen, is enough to redeem a day from waste and make it beautiful.
I am sure it is very much worth while to help a discouraged soul, a life tossed out of its nest of quiet and peace, back into its place again. What I want to do for you, my child, is to help you back into the sweet rest, the quiet peace, the holy confidence which are the privileges of every true Christian. You have been disturbed by your sorrow — it has tossed you out of the nest for the time. Life seemed to be broken up for you very much. But you cannot get back the experience, out of which you have thus been taken. Whatever is inevitablein our life, must be the will of God for us. Since you cannot hope to have restored to you, that which death has taken out of your hand, you must believe that it is the will of God for you that you should go on without these joys.
Another thing is also very sure — it is not necessary that this sorrow should really hurt your life. God allows no experiences to come to us, in which we cannot live victoriously and sweetly as Christians. I am sure, therefore, that he is able to give you grace to live without your friend, to glorify him, to serve him. It becomes the will of God for you, therefore, to adapt yourself to the new experience. You had planned to live with your friend. God's plan leaves the friend out of your earthly experience. Take God's plan — but do not feel that your real joy is to be hurt thereby. That is to say, God is able to make up to you the loss, and help you to live richly and beautifully as you are. Accept, therefore, the will of God and devote yourself to it, not perfunctorily, not as by mere constraint — but cheerfully, song fully, believing that God's way is the best, although you cannot see that it is.
If you read the eighth chapter of Romans, from the twenty-eighth verse to the end, you will find some very sweet and precious truths which will be like rocks for you to lean upon, like clefts in which you may hide from the storm.
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