HOW TO BEAR LITTLE TROUBLES.
By H. W. Beecher
THERE is a kind of narrowness into which, in our every day experience, we are apt to fall, and against which we should most carefully guard.—When a man who is in perfect health has a wound inflicted upon him,—a wound in his foot, a cut in his finger, a pain in his hand—he is almost always sure to feel, even though it be only a small part that is suffering, and the suffering itself be unworthy of the name, that the perfect soundness of all the rest of the body counts as nothing; and a little annoyance is magnified into a universal pain. Only a single point may be hurt, and yet he feels himself clothed with uneasiness, or with a garment of torture. So God may send ten thousand mercies upon us, but if there happen to be only one discomfort among them, one little worry or fret, or bicker, all the mercies and all the comforts are forgotten, and count as nothing! One little trouble is enough to set them all aside! There may be an innumerable train of mercies which, if they are stopped one by one, and questioned, would seem like angels bearing God's gifts in their hands! But we forget them all in the remembrance of the most trivial inconvenience! A man may go about all the day long—discontented, fretting, out of humor—who as evening on asking himself the question, "What has ailed me to day?" may be filled with shame on being unable to tell. The annoyance is so small and slight that he cannot recognize it; yet its power over him is almost incredible. He is equally ashamed with the cause and the result. We may fall into such a state merely through indifference, and remain there simply because we have fallen into it, and make no effort to get out. When a man starts wrong early in the morning, unless he is careful to set himself right before he has gone far, he will hardly be able to straighten out his crookedness until noon or afternoon—if happily then; for a man is like a large ship—he cannot turn around in a small space, and must make his sweep in a large curve. If we wake up with a heavenly mind we are apt to carry it with us throughout the day; but if we wake up with a fretful, peevish, discontented disposition, we are apt to carry that all day, and all the next day too. I have comforted myself, and risen out of this state of mind, by saying to myself, "Well you are in trouble; something has come upon you which is painful; but will you let it clasp its arms around you and shut you in its embrace from the sight and touch of all the many other things that are accounted joys? Will you suffer yourself to be saddled and ridden by it? It is well to remember that there is a way of overcoming present troubles by a remembrance of present mercies. The Apostle Paul knew this, and so exhorted us to "look unto Jesus, who for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross, despising the shame." All that Christ had to bear, he bore patiently,—he carried his sorrow above with him as a very little thing. Why? Because of the "joy that was set before him." O let us apply the exhortation faithfully to ourselves; and when we are worried and tempted to give way to vexation, let us seek a sweet relief in the thought of the blessedness that is set before us to be an inheritance forever.—H. W. Beecher.