| Strength and Beauty |
Chapter 22 |
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But there is a weariness that is not wholesome. There are many people who faint under their burdens, and, finding no adequate recuperative uplift anywhere, sink down in the dark floods. Those who have much to do with the care of souls, those to whom the weary and disheartened turn for help and sympathy, know how many yield to dispiriting influences, and how hard it is to lift up such hands that hang down. Even God’s wonderful ministry of sleep fails to restore them. Laying down their tasks for a time does not bring back the old enthusiasm. Their weariness seems incurable. It is not the natural weariness of health at the close of a busy day – it is a weariness of spirit. Ofttimes it is unwholesome – at least, if one had learned the full, rich secret of God’s peace, one would not have fallen under its power.
Sometimes it is the result of sorrow. We are accustomed to think that sorrow always does good, makes the sufferer better, and sweetens the spirit. But there are many who faint under chastisement. Instead of getting blessing and good from their trouble, they are hurt by it. When a great affliction comes, taking out of the life its light, its joy, its inspiration, there are some who seem unable ever to lift up their head again. “There is nothing left now to live for,” says one; and no pleading of love, no exhortation to duty, seems to recall our friend to the old interest in life.
There is far more of such faintness in the ways of trial and grief than the world knows of. To many life is never the same after a great sorrow. The bereft one does not desire to taste joy again.
“I wish that when you died last May,
Charles, there had died along with you
Three parts of Spring’s delightful things.
Aye, and for me the fourth part too.”
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