c v e e \ i t U ' \ \ ^ S s
G o o d g r i e f ! Talk about a camel’s going through a needle’s eye! Was this part of middle age, stab bing a moistened thread again and again at a sewing machine needle? Finally I pulled it through. I was star tled to hear the words, “ Thank you, Lord!” come aloud from my lips. Startled because I seemed somewhere along the line to have lost the art of spontaneous praise. My problems seemed to have enveloped me. I was ex periencing the shadows as never before. When had I let the negative thoughts, the cares and worries of this life, move in as tenants of my spirit? Satan must have managed it gradually, with great finesse. I was shocked when someone dear to me dared to say, “ You haven’t said a positive or cheerful thing all day.” I had looked at her and realized that it was true. “Not today nor for many days,” I agreed sadly. I felt completely appalled. What could I do? If the end results had been shown me when I indulged those first dismal thoughts, I should have avoided them as I would a con tagious disease or the narcotics habit. Oh, I’d dredged up the usual blessings that we in America are inclined to take for granted, and I’d gone through a form of lip service from a sense of duty. . . but when had I felt the words tumbling out of their own volition, “ Praise the Lord” ? A prominent Christian friend likes to indicate her gratitude to God in a crowded room when her witness or someone else’s is being effectively used, “ P.T.L.” Her lips silently forming the letters have lifted my spirits more than once. How could I experience the same effervescent joy? Or His quiet peace? I used to wonder when my husband would say some thing in his prayers, “Give us grateful hearts.” I had pictured myself as already possessing a grateful heart. Now through my times of depression I saw that it was possible to blot out that gratitude, to be filled with
“ the spirit of heaviness.” Where should I start again to climb the upward path? Obviously not in my own strength. I laid aside my sewing and reached for my Bible. The prophet Isaiah had a message for people like me, when he pro- claimbed the advent of Jesus Christ:
“ The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me; because the Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the broken hearted, to proclaim liberty to the cap tives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound . . . to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness” (Isaiah 61:1, 3).
The Lord was ready to wrap me in “ the garment of praise.” Not so long ago I had spoken, taught and written the message of salvation. God had undergirded the witness. He had been my strength. He didn’t want me to present the image of a powerless, frightened, unhappy Christian. I would admit my own helplessness. I would learn to walk again, as my mother did after a severe child hood illness. “Walk in newness of life,” Paul called it (Homans 6:4b). “ That ye might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, being fruitful in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God; strength ened with all might, according to his glorious power, unto all patience and longsuffering with joyfulness; Giving thanks unto the Father, which hath made us meet [fit] to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light: Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son: In whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins” (Col. 1:10-14). I could hardly stop reading. “ Thank you, Lord!”
NOVEMBER, 1964
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