LET IT GO by Anna Robertson Brown

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Jan 30, 1907

LET IT GO.

By Anna Robertson Brown

We may let go discontent. In all the eternal years there is no word of murmur from any restless heart. In its vast silences how trivial would sound the complainings of our harassed days! In its great songs of praise how our frettings would be overborne!

In life one thing makes for discontent. It is lack of harmony with one's environment. A congenial environment is not one of the essentials of life; present opportunities, if rightly used, are as great as the soul may ask. Which of us can sit down at the close of a day and say, "To-day I have done all that was in my power to do for humanity and righteousness"? Ah, no! We look for large things, and forget that which is close at hand! To take life "as God gives it, not as we want it," and then make the best of it, is the hard lesson that life puts before the human soul to learn.

One's environment may be very disagreeable. It may bring constant hurt of heart, mortification, tears, angry rebellion, and wounded pride, but there is a reason for that environment. To become strong, the soul must needs fight something, overcome something. It can not gain muscle on a bed of eider-down. A great part of the strength of life consists in the degree with which we get into harmony with our appointed environment. So long as we are at war with our town, our relatives, our family, our station, and our surroundings, so long will much of the force of our lives be spent uselessly, aimlessly. A good way to get into harmony with environment is to try to adapt ourselves to it as far as may be possible. Rather say, God put me here among these people, these opportunities, these duties. He is neither absent-minded nor incompetent. This is exactly the place where He means me to be; the place I am capable of filling. There is no mistake. I am in my proper setting now. The setting will change as I grow and grow forever.—Anna Robertson Brown.