Learn Not to Be Disappointed.
"LEARN not to be disappointed," was the advice recently given to one lamenting the failure of hopes and plans. Its quality depended wholly on the manner of putting it in practice, on the means to be employed for its achievement. If it is to be accomplished by cultivating stoicism, it is better let alone, though one suffer many needless pangs. But if, through one's trust in the Heavenly Father's provident care of all his creatures, and added to this a reliance on the statement "All things work together for good to them that love God," one rises superior to disappointment, then it is well. And this is the privilege of every one of God's children. Why should we distrust? Through all the annoyances of life, just as truly as through its sorrows, he is drawing us nearer to himself. In great sorrows we easily recognize his hand, but in the simple and multiplied vexations of life we find it more difficult. And yet the true secret of learning not to be disappointed lies in the habit of attributing everything that comes to us unsought, whether of good or ill, of joy or sorrow, to a divine hand; and of accepting it with a child-like confidence that is at once the offspring of infinite knowledge and infinite love. "Not my will, but thine," was the Saviour's utterance in the darkest hour of his life; and such is the spirit we, as his followers, should seek to cultivate. We lose so much of sweetness and joy, of a restful quietness, by fretting and combating instead of quietly accepting. We grow hard and bitter oftentimes under the very discipline that should make us gentle and tender. Besides, to this trust is given one of the most precious promises of the Bible, "perfect peace." A peace that lifts one above the jars and discords of life into such an atmosphere of security and freedom that it becomes possible, as never before, to discern the true relation of things temporal to things eternal; to use the gifts possessed, whether one or many, to the greatest advantage, and to obey the apostle's injunction, "Rejoice evermore."
— Christian at Work.