A LITTLE girl, very quiet and somewhat shy, is toddling about the house with a smiling face. Unlike most little girls, she is not talkative, and never seems happier than when quite alone. She is utterly void of fear. Darkness for her has no gloom. Silence has a solemnity that she loves. So quiet and happy is she that father and mother wonder at her fullness of peace. “Aggie, darling,” said her mother one day, “what makes you so happy?” There was a slight pause—a look of mingled reverence and delight spread over the sweet child-face, and then came the answer in subdued tones, “God do make me happy!”
Yes, it is not what, but WHOM that makes all clear. When God in Christ is the Portion of the soul, the believer, though a child, lives, moves, and breathes in Christ’s own peace, and tastes Christ’s own joy.
The inquiry, “How are you enjoying yourself?” is common enough, and shows the natural bent of the heart. To the natural mind it is a strange thing to “delight one’s self in the Lord,” and a bitter thing to be debarred from worldly pursuits and pleasures, and it is difficult to say whether cares entangle the soul one whit less than pleasures.
If we have care, let us cast it upon Him who careth for us. But why be anxious about anything? What folly for the sheep whom the Good Shepherd has found, and is carrying gently along, to put in his word about the most desirable path to be chosen!
Oh! what patience the Lord has with us, dear brethren! What absurd follies, on our part, He endures, day by day!
But He loves us too well to suffer us to aim at any goal but that which He has set before us, or to recognize any standard but that which we find in Himself HE is the center and standard of our joy. “His joys our sweetest joys afford.” J. B.