Be of Good Cheer by A. W. Spaulding

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Feb 15, 1912

Be of Good Cheer

By A. W. Spaulding

A. W. SPAULDING

With what glad words does our Saviour greet us at the threshold of sorrow! “In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer.” Used as we are to the world’s experience and the world’s philosophy, with the thought of tribulation we connect dejection; with trouble, gloom; with sorrow, tears. But Jesus presents his own and Heaven’s way: “Ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer.” And in his philosophy, then, with his point of view, we connect with tribulation, cheer; with trouble, joy; with sorrow, smiles.

Not without reason does he ask us to be of good cheer; and he immediately gives his reason: “I have overcome the world.” If we meet our troubles by ourselves, we shall find no cheer; for we shall find those troubles oppressors, conquerors. Only when hidden in Him, wrapped up in his purpose, his work, do we find victory. Is my chief concern how I may make a living? Do I fear to follow his directions for work because I may starve? Then in trouble I can not be of good cheer. Is my mind intent on my reputation or advancement, on my standing with the world or with the brethren? then every word of disparagement, every evil report against me, every opposition, will cause me grief, and drive me farther from God. But, wrapped in the ardent love of Christ, burning to forward his work and to save souls, intent only on doing what he has told me to do, then, in the face of privation, criticism, misrepresentation, I find good cheer; for all those things my Saviour has overcome, and in him I also find them naught.

But leaving the personal matters, let us look at the real difficulties. The personal tribulations are tribulations only to the novice; the true Christian worker, having triumphed over those, finds nevertheless a more distressful tribulation in the conditions facing God’s work,—a tribulum [thrashing instrument] that afflicts even heaven itself.

The evangelist looks upon the flock he is leading into the truth: he sees perhaps in them unconquered pride, or levity, or passion, or deceit; he sees souls whom he has committed to God letting go the heavenly hand, and slipping down to perdition.

The teacher sees the gross materialism of those who have been long in the truth, and should have been sanctified by it; he sees the unrestrained passions of the children, the low ideals and unholy ambitions of the youth, the indifference and disobedience of adults; he sees families ungoverned and untaught, fathers and mothers with eyes blinded to the greater faults and minutely critical of the lesser faults of their children; he sees the love of the world swaying God’s people, and the love of the truth being lost.

The medical worker beholds especially the misery that springs from the indulgence of appetite and passion, the dirt and squalor of city hovel and country hut, the suffering that exists also through the ignorance and indifference to law of the dwellers in palace and temple; he sees the crime, the physical misery, the mental woe, the hopelessness of soul, of the transgressors of God’s law.

Afar over the land the eye travels, to behold in crowded city and spreading plain and desolate heights, only selfishness, greed, strife, degradation of body and mind and soul. This is the tribulation, the thrashing, that the heart of the Christian worker knows. It is his work to bring out from that seething mass of corruption, pure, undefiled lives and homes and workers.

Ah, how the human mind and heart quail before the prospect! Where to begin, what to do, how much to expect,—these questions present themselves to the worker; and in what he can see of good, in what view he may have of past accomplishments, he of himself can find room only for fear and discouragement. Then come the Master’s words, “In the world ye shall have tribulation: be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.” Blessed are these words of cheer:—

“Christ sees all the misery and despair of the world, the sight of which would bow down some of our workers of large capabilities with a weight of discouragement so great that they would not know how even to begin the work of leading men and women to the first round of the ladder. . . . Christ’s heart is cheered by the sight of those who are poor in every sense of the term; cheered by his view of the ill-used ones who are meek; cheered by the seemingly unsatisfied hungering after righteousness, by the inability of many to begin. He welcomes, as it were, the very condition of things that would discourage many ministers. . . . He works through those who discern mercy in misery, gain in the loss of all things. When the Light of the world passes by, privileges appear in all hardships, order in confusion, the success and wisdom of God in that which has seemed to be failure.”—Testimonies for the Church, Vol. VII, pages 271, 272.

Hidden in him, we take up with cheer the immediate duty that each of us has to perform: the father and mother in the home, the teacher in the church, the minister in the field, the canvasser on the frontier, the medical missionary in the haunts of misery and vice, the Christian helper wherever the needs of the world are crying for help. Beholding Christ the conqueror, we lose sight of the fear and the hopelessness that confronted us. We sow the seed, and leave it there for him to germinate, knowing that the harvest surely comes. Striving daily to do in his strength that which lies at our hand, we meet the opposing circumstances with a refusal to be dismayed, with a confidence in victory, and, in the midst of tribulation, with Christ’s good cheer.

Alpharetta, Ga.