p. 9 | GREATLY BELOVED by Fannie Bolton

Pacific Press Publishing Company · OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA · Jul 1, 1897

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 23, No. 25.

GREATLY BELOVED.

By Fannie Bolton

MRS. PATTERSON was very much discouraged and depressed. She sat down in the midst of the disorder occasioned by the exit of the children for school. The breakfast dishes were still on the table. The beds were unmade; the baby's little garments were scattered about, and Mrs. Patterson sat in the low rocker, and sobbed as if her heart would break. Her life seemed a complete failure; for it was so entirely different from the life she had planned for herself in the rosy days of girlhood. She had married the man of her choice, and as he had a good position, she had looked forward to a large social life, and had had dreams of how she would royally entertain her friends, not for social influence alone, but to better the life of others by sharing her own joy with them. She meant to take a large part in church work, in visiting the poor, in working for the downfallen, and thought to be the center of some waves of influence for good in the world.

Alas! first came financial reverses of so severe an order that they had to move from the aristocratic quarters in which they had lived, and found themselves left out of the circles of influential society. It was too painful to go to the fashionable church of which they had been members, and too humiliating to become members of the little Mission Church that was near by, and so they did not connect themselves with any church. Then the babies came one after another, and it took a great deal of contriving to make both ends meet. Mrs. Patterson did try not to show her disappointment, but out of the abundance of the heart everything flows, and while Mr. Patterson struggled hard against an adverse providence, as it seemed to him, he also had to carry the continual burden of his wife's sorrow and disappointment. Tho he never said it to her, he wished a hundred times that he had never married her, not that he had ceased to love her, but that he loved her too much to see her in grief, and through his failure to provide better things, caused to toil and suffer. Of course the marriage service had provided for the very emergency that had come when it dictated the words, "For better or for worse, for richer or for poorer," but how lightly they had spoken the vows, and how small they had found was their strength as they fainted in the day of adversity.

Yet all this outward combination of disappointing circumstances was not so hard to bear as the combination of circumstances that seemed to develop out of it, that brought about revelations of weakness in the inward life. Mr. Patterson in his soul had some hard thoughts of God; "for," he said, "if he is God, he must have known how it would all turn out, and why has he permitted me to make so great a blunder?"

Mrs. Patterson too thought God had forsaken her, because her heart was full of bitterness. Tho she thought she loved her husband, she always found herself casting her griefs and worries upon him, and she had thought she would be the very sunshine of his home and heart. Then the dear children came in for scolding and fretfulness. She who had thought to be an ideal mother (and she had very high thoughts of motherhood) stood before the record of her deeds and words to her little ones horrified by the crumbling of her own self-ideal. She had thought to be a bountiful, sympathetic neighbor, and she did not even know who was the sorrowing mother that lived next door to her, who had yesterday followed a little coffin to the grave. She who had planned to be a church worker, had not been inside the house of God for years, and, tho she had thought to have always bowed at morning and evening at the family altar, there was not even the ruins of one in her home. They ate their food without thanksgiving, and could it be wondered at that they rose up hungry in heart, and with life after all only a wilderness?

When all the failure of her life had sought to press upon her to her own self-condemnation, up to this time she had thrust it aside, casting the blame upon circumstances, and so upon God, and had hardened her heart to him and to all. But to-day it was too plain to be avoided.

The little serving girl had taken the baby out to the park. The other children were at school, and she had sent them off as usual with pained faces. How little Maud had looked back with wistful eyes! The beautiful ideal life rose up before her, and the shattered reality stood by its side. She was broken-hearted. How utterly selfish she had been! How slow to see her husband's patience and toil for her! How wrapped up in her own disappointments, so that she had no word of comfort for those more sorely tried! O, how thankful she felt that it had not been her own darling babe that went to that narrow couch of yesterday! What if it had been? Whose kindness had preserved him for her? What opportunities she had that she never saw before,—four beautiful children to perhaps be what she had failed to be. "O, they must be!" she cried out. "I covet for them this beautiful life I have failed to live. It's all my fault," she moaned. "O God, forgive me! I see it all. How could I have helped the poor or the sorrowing, who had only a theory by which I have failed to live myself? My strength is as weakness. My whole life garment is filthy rags. It has been I who have forsaken God, yet expected to be godlike. O Christ, what shall I do?"

Mrs. Patterson reached for her long neglected Bible, and silently asked her forsaken God to open it to a place that would meet her soul need. Did it open by chance?—She thought not. As it opened to the ninth chapter of Daniel, she read Daniel's confession of sin. It was the very cry of her soul. How appropriate seemed the words: "O Lord, righteousness belongeth unto thee, but unto us confusion of faces." "We do not present our supplications before thee for our righteousness, but for thy great mercies." Then she ran through text after text of God's sweet and wonderful promises. They were all for one in just such a strait as she was.

She read: "Tho your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; tho they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land." She knew her sins were as crimson. Then she read: "If we confess our sin, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." "If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and he is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world." What comfort she took in the text that when "we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly"! What tears of contrition and love flowed as she took in the words: "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. . . . And ye shall find rest unto your souls"!

The meaning of the adverse circumstances of her life began to dawn upon her, and her heart was filled with gratitude that God's love had not granted her selfish wishes, but had brought her to the place where the counsel of her heart was made manifest, and its deceptions unveiled. "It was because he loved me that he has chastened me, and I can truly say that his rod is one of comfort to-day."

She turned back to Daniel and read again the words of confession, and then on to a verse at which she paused, and read and reread, and then lifted her face with such a glow of light and love that it was almost transfigured. It was the verse that says the angel Gabriel touched Daniel as he was confessing his sins, and told him he was "greatly beloved." "O, it means me too!" exclaimed the woman. "It means every poor, broken soul who comes confessing his own weakness and despair. O, what a Saviour I have found this morning! I am greatly beloved of God. Christ has loved me with an everlasting love. Tho I have forsaken him, he has not forsaken me, but has loved me unto death."

The clock struck eleven, and Mrs. Patterson saw the little serving girl coming with the baby. She ran to meet them, and surprised them both with a warm kiss. The baby crowed and lifted up his chubby arms. She saw her neighbor watching her as she hugged baby to her bosom.

"Run in, dear," she said to the girl, "and wash up the dishes, and get the children's lunch. I want to go over to that poor mother who has no darling for her empty arms. God has comforted me to-day, and we all are greatly beloved."