The Bright Side by Arthur V. Fox

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Sep 26, 1911

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 38, No. 38.

The Bright Side

By Arthur V. Fox

LOOK on the bright side of things. It is the right side. It is the sunshine that causes the beautiful flowers to assume their rich variety of colors. Live, then, in the glorious sunlight, and the shadows will not darken the pathway. Why turn every blessing around that God sends us, to see if there is not a dark side to it? How ungrateful, and what a low spiritual state such a soul must live in! The bright sunshine floods the beautiful landscape with its golden light, far oftener than it is obscured by the storm-cloud’s shadow. The bright side is the true side. Things appear in a clear light, and as they really are, with no darkness to distort or disfigure their real outlines.

True, we may have sorrows and trials; so have others. None are exempt from them. Perhaps it is well that we are not, or we would not care to look beyond to Him who “endured the cross and despised the shame,” and to our bright eternal home above.

The bright side is the joyous side of life; and the habit of looking for it, brings cheer and sunshine to the soul. It leads us in pleasant paths, through flowery meadows, by peaceful waters, beneath green, waving branches and the singing of birds. It crowns the summits of life’s mountains with a halo of glory, and gilds them with the golden light of hope. It makes our life one of victory, of conquest, of song and joy.

The gloom and shadows that gather round us are dispersed while looking upon life’s shining side, and even the bending heavens smile calmly and sweetly down into the sunny heart.

This earth is not all a vale of tears, or a wilderness of wo, if we would only look more on the joyous side of things. Some have indeed gazed so long on the dark and wrong side of life, that the real appearance of things has become so perverted to them that their natures have partaken of gloomy and false ideas, and they therefore conclude that there is no joy or sunshine in all the world. Life is far too short and eternity too near, that we should employ any portion of our time here in the pursuit of shadows or gloom, or searching for faults or mistakes in the character of our fellow men. Let us look up, and not down; look out, and not in; and the holy, joyous presence of God’s sunshine will fill our hearts, like the glorious coming of springtime, and the blooming of flowers.

Los Angeles, Cal.