Hunting for Trouble by M. J. C.

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Sep 21, 1876

Hunting for Trouble

By M. J. C.

Is VERY poor business. If we haven't anything else to do we had better inform our friends of our situation, and beg of them to give us something to do. We have no need to look for trouble; but if we do, we will find plenty. “The luckiest person that ever lived might have woes enough if he set himself seriously to work looking them up.” How very true. If you have no trouble, go to work looking some up, and you will not be obliged to search long. There is a vile inventor of trouble, who has an unlimited range in this world of ours; and whenever he sees any one who has the least inclination to look for trouble, he is on hand without delay to assist. He has a peculiar faculty of making trouble out of almost everything, and he don't wait to be invited. You know who he is; and you know he is a dangerous associate; and if you don't want his company and influence, don't hunt for trouble.

Never turn a blessing round to see if it has got a dark side to it, and always take it for granted that things are blessings until they prove to be something else. This I deem to be excellent advice. How often, when a blessing comes to us, we worry ourselves out of all enjoyment of it, simply because we fear something, we hardly know what, and so we keep turning it over to find the dark side we fear it has, until we lose the blessing we might have had.

Oh! let us forever cease hunting for the dark side, if we don't hunt it up, we may, perhaps, be spared the pain of seeing it, even though there be one, and let us accept our blessings with thankful hearts; then we can have the presence of the good angels with us, and they can help us, as by magic wand, turn trouble into blessings.

M. J. C.