Seeing Things Rightly by Theodore Cuyler

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D. C. · Nov 19, 1903

Seeing Things Rightly

By Theodore Cuyler

THERE is a right way and a wrong way of looking at almost everything. Spiritual discernment is a very important grace; for many of our joys and many of our sorrows proceed from our method of looking at those things which concern our peace. Salvation depends upon a right view of Jesus Christ. The difference between the impenitent sinner and the same person after he is regenerated is that he looks at Christ with a new eye, and has discovered him to be the very Saviour and Guide that he needs.

But there is no direction in which we are apt to make more egregious mistakes than when we look to our Heavenly Father’s providential dealings. Some Christians are betrayed into a heathenish habit of talking about “good luck” and the “bad fortune,” and using other expressions that convey the idea that human life is a mere game of chance. Blind unbelief may be expected to err, and to scan God’s work as either a riddle or a muddle. A Christian who has had his eyes opened ought to know better than to make such mistakes. Yet how prone we are to regard many of God’s dealings in a wrong light, and to call them by wrong names. We speak of things as afflictions, which are really great blessings under a dark disguise. We often congratulate people on getting what turns out to be a dangerous snare or a lamentable loss. Quite as often we condole with them over occurrences which are about to yield to them blessings more precious than gold.

Be careful how you condole with a man who has lost his money and saved his character, and be equally careful how you congratulate a man who has made a million dollars at the expense of his religion. A severe sickness has often brought recovery to a sinner’s soul, and suffering often works out for a Christian an exceeding weight of glory. Let us learn to see things rightly, and call them by their right names. Then we shall not put funeral palls over rich blessings, or decorate temptations with garlands of roses. Let us all ask God to open our eyes and give us spiritual discernment. Then we shall discover that this life is only a training school for a higher and better one; then we shall see a Father’s smile behind the darkest cloud, and at the end of the pilgrimage of duty it will be one of the raptures of heaven to behold the King in his beauty, and know all things even as we have been known.

If we possessed clearer discernment, we should not so often torment ourselves with sinful anxieties about the future. Our loving Lord knew what was in man when he reiterated his remonstrances against borrowing trouble in advance, and when he said, “Be not, therefore, anxious for the morrow; sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” Worry is not only a sin against God, it is a sin against our health and peace. It sometimes amounts to slow suicide. Honest work, however hard, seldom hurts us; it is worry that corrodes and kills. There is only one practical remedy for the sin of anxiety. Let us not climb the high wall until we get to it, or fight the battle until it opens, or shed tears over sorrows that may never come, or lose the joys of present blessings by the sinful fear that God will take them away from us. We need all our strength and all the grace that God can give us for to-day’s burdens and to-day’s battles. To-morrow belongs to our Heavenly Father. I would not know its secrets if I could. It is far better to know whom we trust, and that he is able to keep all that we commit to him.

“Why forecast the trials of life With such sad and grave persistence, And look and watch for a crowd of ills That as yet have no existence?”

“Strength for to-day is all that we need, For we never will see to-morrow; When it comes, the morrow will be to-day, With its measures of joy or sorrow.”

Theodore Cuyler, in Northwestern Christian Advocate.