|
Our burdens!
From Spurgeon's sermon, "CONTENTMENT"
If you are poor you should be well content with your
position, because, depend upon it, it is the fittest for you.
Unerring wisdom cast your lot.
If you were rich, you would not have so much grace as you
have now. Perhaps God knew, that did he not make you
poor, he would never get you to heaven at all; and so he has
kept you where you are, that he may conduct you to heaven.
Suppose there is a ship of large weight to be brought up a
river, and in one part of the river there is a shallow; should
someone ask, "Why does the captain steer his vessel
through the deep part of the channel?" His answer would be,
"Because I should not get it into harbor at all if I did
not take it by this course."
So, it may be, you would remain aground and suffer
shipwreck, if your Divine Captain did not always make you
trace the deepest part of the water, and make you go where
the current ran with the greatest speed.
Some plants die if they are too much exposed; it may be that
you are planted in some sheltered part of the garden where
you do not get as much sun as you would like, but you are
put there as a plant of his own righteous planting, that you
may bring forth fruit unto perfection.
Remember this-- had any other condition been better for you
than the one in which you are, God would have put you
there. You are put by him in the most suitable place, and if
you had had the picking of your lot half-an-hour afterwards,
you would have come back and said, "Lord, choose for me,
for I have not chosen the best after all."
You have heard, perhaps, the old fable in Aesop, of the men
that complained to Jupiter, of their burdens,
and the god in
anger, bade every one of them get rid of his burden,
and
then take the one he would like best. They all came and did
so. There was a man who had a lame leg, and he thought he
could do better if he had a blind eye. The man who had a
blind eye thought he could do better if he had to bear
poverty and not blindness. While the man who was poor
thought poverty the worst of ills- he would not mind taking
the sickness of the rich man if he could but have his riches.
So they all made a change of their burdens.
But the fable
says that within an hour they were all back again, asking that
they might have their old burdens, as they
found the original
burdens so much lighter than the one that
was taken by their
own selection.
So would you find it also.
Then be content; you cannot better your lot.
Take up your cross; you could not have a better trial than
you have got; it is the best for you; it sifts you the most;
it will do you the most good, and prove the most effective
means of making you perfect in every good word and work
to the glory of God.
|