Heb 12:1 Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us,
O
run with patience is a very difficult thing. Running is apt to suggest
the absence of patience, the eagerness to reach the goal.
We commonly
associate patience with lying down. We think of it as the angel that
guards the couch of the invalid. Yet, I do not think the invalid's
patience the hardest to achieve.
There is a patience
which I believe to be harder--the patience that can run.
To lie down in
the time of grief, to be quiet under the stroke of adverse fortune,
implies a great strength; but I know of something that implies a
strength greater still:
It is the power to work under a stroke; to have a
great weight at your heart and still to run; to have a deep anguish in
your spirit and still perform the daily task. It is a Christlike thing!
Many
of us would nurse our grief without crying if we were allowed to nurse
it.
The hard thing is that most of us are called to exercise our
patience, not in bed, but in the street.
We are called to bury our
sorrows, not in lethargic quiescence, but in active service--in the
exchange, in the workshop, in the hour of social intercourse, in the
contribution to another's joy.
There is no burial of sorrow so difficult
as that; it is the "running with patience."
This was
Thy patience, O Son of man! It was at once a waiting and a running--a
waiting for the goal, and a doing of the lesser work meantime.
I see
Thee at Cana turning the water into wine lest the marriage feast should
be clouded.
I see Thee in the desert feeding a multitude with bread just
to relieve a temporary want.
All, all the time, Thou wert bearing a
mighty grief, unshared, unspoken.
Men ask for a rainbow in the cloud;
but I would ask more from Thee.
I would be, in my cloud, myself a
rainbow--a minister to others' joy.
My patience will be perfect when it
can work in the vineyard.
~George Matheson~
When all our hopes are gone, 'Tis well our hands must keep toiling on For others' sake:
For strength to bear is found in duty done; And he is best indeed who learns to make The joy of others cure his own heartache."
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