World-Weary | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 24, 1873

World-Weary.

Society is full of people who know that their lives are frivolous and unsatisfying. It chafes them to feel that they are the victims of the great world-show, whirled along in it, whithersoever it listeth, with no opportunity for a deeper culture, no time or vitality left for the discipline of the soul, for coming into fellowship with the great minds of the race, for communing with what is noblest and best in human thought; no time left for walking with Christ in the lowly and obscure paths of charity, for letting their spirits lie still, that they may be put in tune, purified, calmed, and rested, in the arms of God.

Persons thus ensnared by their earthly and selfish cares may well look back and sigh for the advantages of other days. They know that there was much more of reality and noble truth in their lives then than now. They were nearer to nature and to all that gives largeness and strength of soul. Well may they envy the obscure Christian, unvexed with trifling cares, whose conversation is in Heaven, who walks daily with God and amid those truths and thoughts which are the glorious essence of things.

How often, weary and empty of soul in this world-pageant, men and women would be glad to flee out of it, as Moses fled from Pharaoh’s court to Midian. Better to keep the sheep of Jethro, if he might thus come unto Horeb, the mount of God, than to bask amid royal pleasures, which are a weariness and pain. Better to flee into the wilderness, and sit under a juniper tree, fed by the ravens, and drinking of the brook, than to be oppressed with gayeties which are but vanity and vexation of spirit.

It was not to Pharisee and scribe, amid the pomp, and life they so proudly led, but to the shepherds who watched their flocks by night, that the angel of the Lord appeared. To them, and to wise men in the East, silently communing with the stars, was it first made known that a Saviour had been born.

Not amid the hurry of Laban’s home, but while he lay alone in his far desert journey, were God’s eternal counsels revealed to Jacob.

There must be more of simplicity in our modern lives, less of earthly engrossment, and more of high spiritual aspiration, if we would save ourselves from becoming the automatons of the hour.—Sel.