Adventures in the Land of CanaanBerry, R. L. (Robert Lee)
Religion
Adventures in the Land of Canaan
Berry, R. L. (Robert Lee)
Christian life
"Not long after I crossed the Jordan, I met him. He came lumbering down
upon me, and I thought my days in Canaan were numbered. It was only after
I made some blunder or said some tactless thing that Mistake bothered
me, but at such times he gave me untold trouble. One time a pilgrim named
Slow was standing by the way. As I was passing him, I, not being as
careful as I should be, bumped into him and nearly knocked him off the
road. Poor fellow, he began to cry, and said he was ruined and believed
that if such was the way pilgrims treated each other, he would go back
into Egypt. This, of course, caused me to feel very sorry. I went back
and apologized the best I could, but it hardly consoled him. I started
on. And, do you know, up came Giant Mistake! He caught hold of me and
gave me a sound thrashing for what I had done [1 Peter 2:20].
"But really, Mistake did not cause me so much trouble as did Giant
Discourager. This Giant Discourager is a true giant, of pure Anakim
blood, and he is in the habit of accompanying Mistake. And so it was
that every time I met Mistake, old Giant Discourager was with him. Giant
Discourager beat me unmercifully nearly every time I met Mistake. He
would flog me within an inch of my life and throw me down so bruised and
bleeding that I almost wished I was dead [1 Kings 19:9-18]. It was only
when I made a blunder that Mistake and Discourager beat me; but as I
made these nearly every day, my life grew very miserable. I was about
to conclude that Canaan-land had lost all its milk and honey; for I had
not found very much of either yet.
"It got so that I anticipated the approach of these giants, and they
never disappointed my anticipations. Giant Discourager would call me all
kinds of names, such as a sinner, a perfect failure, a no-good, a weakling,
a coward. And he would tell me, 'You have no faith,' 'You never will get
a home in Canaan,' 'You will be cast out at last,' and many such like
things would he say to me.
"When in my very worst battle with Mistake and Discourager, old Giant
Despair came around to see me [1 Kings 19:4]. He claimed that by my
repeated failures he had the right to possession of my soul, and he said
he was going to carry me to his dungeon and club me to death, just as
he almost did Bunyan's pilgrim, Christian. This frightened me nearly to
death.
"In the very extremity of this bitter battle, an angel of Immanuel, named
Solicitude, came to my side one day and said, 'I will teach you how to
tame Giant Mistake and how to put Giant Discourager to flight.'
"'Oh, do tell me!' I cried.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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