Many people imagine that they could live very much better if their circumstances were different. In their failure to live a noble and worthy life they find comfort in laying the blame on some infelicity or hardness in their lot.
This is very foolish. For one thing, it does not good. Blaming circumstances will not change them. After all, they are our circumstances, and we must live out our life in the midst of them. Besides, God in his providences has put us just where we find ourselves, and unless we claim to be wiser than God, we must conclude that we are in the right place–at least, that it is quite possible for us to live a true Christian life where we are.
“Thou cam’st not to thy place by accident:
It is the very place God meant for thee;
And shouldst thou there small scope for action see,
Do not for this give room to discontent,
Nor let the time thou owest to God be spent
In idly dreaming how thou mightest be.”
God does not choose for us the place where we can have the most pleasant time, with the least friction and the fewest weights and encumbrances. Life on the earth is a school, and he puts us where we shall receive the best training. The easier place might be more comfortable, but the harder place does the more for us–makes the more out of us.
Some people think that if they could get away from others and live alone they would be better Christians. Men irritate them, tempt them, stir up the evil that is in them, and excite them. But men do not grow best in solitude and apart from others. The goodness that is good only because there is no friction, no provocation, nothing to try it, is scarcely worth the name. Life needs life to school it and develop it.
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