Flinging Shadows | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 7, 1875

Flinging Shadows.

WE have no more right to fling an unnecessary shadow over the spirit of those with whom we have to do than we have to fling a stone and injure them. Yet this flinging shadows is a very common sin, and one to which women are particularly addicted. Oh, what a blessing is a merry, cheerful woman in a household! one whose spirits are not affected by wet days, or little disappointments, or whose milk of human kindness does not sour in the sunshine of prosperity. Such a woman in the darkest hours brightens the house like a little piece of sunshine weather. The magnetism of her smile, the electrical brightness of her looks and movements, affects every one. The children go to school with a sense of something great to be achieved; her husband goes into the world in a conqueror’s spirit. No matter how people worry and annoy him at day, far off her presence shines, and he whispers to himself, “At home I shall find rest.” So day by day she literally renews his strength and energy, and if you know a man with a beaming face, a kind heart, and a prosperous business, in nine cases out of ten you will find he has a wife of this kind. For nothing is more certain than that the man who is married must ask his wife for permission to be happy and wealthy. Blessed is he who hath a cheerful wife; the world may be a “valley of strife” to him, but his home is a land of Beulah, a haven of rest and quiet; and his life is made up of cheerful yesterdays and confident to-morrows.—Sel.