The Small Worries

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Nov 25, 1873

The Small Worries.

THE Christian world has long been guessing what Paul's thorn in the flesh was. We have a book that in ten pages tries to show what Paul's thorn was not, and in another ten pages tries to show what it was.

Many of the theological doctors have felt Paul's pulse to see what was the matter with him. We suppose the reason he did not tell us what it was, may have been because he did not want us to know. He knew that if he stated what it was, there would have been a great many people from Corinth bothering him with prescriptions as to how he might cure it.

Some say that it was diseased eyes, some that it was a humped back. It may have been neuralgia. Perhaps it was gout, although his active habits and a sparse diet throw doubt on the supposition. Suffice it to say it was a thorn—that is, it stuck him. It was sharp.

It was probably of not much account in the eyes of the world. It was not a trouble that could be compared to a lion, or a boisterous sea. It was like a thorn that you may have in your hand or foot, and no one know it. Thus we see that it becomes a type of those little nettlesome worries of life that exasperate the spirit.

Every one has a thorn sticking him. The housekeeper finds it in unfaithful domestics; or an inmate who keeps things disordered; or a house too small for convenience, or too large to be kept cleanly. The professional man finds it in perpetual interruptions or calls for “more copy.” The Sabbath-school teacher finds it in inattentive scholars or neighboring teachers that talk loudly and make a great noise in giving a little instruction. One man has a rheumatic joint, which, when the wind is north-east, lifts the storm signal. Another, a business partner who takes full half the profits, but does not help earn them. These trials are the more nettlesome because like Paul's thorn they are not to be mentioned. Men get sympathy for broken bones, and mashed feet, but not for the end of sharp thorns that have been broken off in the fingers.

Let us start out with the idea that we must have annoyances. It seems to take a certain number of them to keep us humble, wakeful, and prayerful. To Paul, the thorn was disciplinary, as the shipwreck. If it is not one thing, it is another. If the stove does not smoke, the boiler must leak. If the pen is good, the ink must be poor. If the thorn does not pierce the knee, it must take you in the back. Life must have sharp things in it. We cannot make up our robe of Christian character without pins and needles.

We want what Paul got: grace to bear these things. Without it, we become cross, censorious, and irascible. We get in the habit of sticking our thorns into other people's fingers. But, God helping us, we place these annoyances in the category of the “all things work together for good.” We see how much shorter thorns are than the spikes that stuck through the palms of Christ's hands, and, remembering that he had on his head a whole crown of thorns, we take to ourselves the consolation that if we suffer with him on earth, we shall be glorified with him in Heaven.

But how could Paul positively rejoice in these infirmities? The school of Christ has three classes of scholars; in the first class, we learn how to be stuck with thorns without losing our patience; in the second class, we learn how to make the sting positively advantageous; in the third class of this school, we learn how even to rejoice in being pierced and wounded: but that is the senior class, and when we get to that, we are near graduation into glory.—Christian at Work.