The aim and object of all striving in life should be to grow more
human, more humane, less selfish, more helpful to our fellows. Any
system of life that fails to meet this universal need is predestined
to failure. When, therefore, I urge upon my readers that they quit
their worrying about their husbands or wives, sons and daughters,
neighbors and friends, the wicked and the good, I do not mean that
they are to harden their hearts and become indifferent to their
welfare. God forbid! No student of the human heart, of human life, and
of the Bible can long ignore the need of a caution upon these lines.
The sacred writer knew what he was talking about when he spoke of the
human heart as deceitful and desperately wicked. It is deceitful or it
would never blind people as it does to the inutility, the futility of
much of their goodness. A goodness that is wrapped up in a napkin, and
lies unused for the benefit of others, rots and becomes a putrid mass
of corruption. It can only remain good by being unselfishly used for
the good of others, and to prove that the human heart is desperately
wicked one needs only to look at the suffering endured by mankind
unnecessarily--suffering that organized society ought to prevent and
render impossible.
The parable of the lost sheep was written to give us this needful
lesson. The shepherd, when he found one of his sheep gone, did not sit
down and wring his hands in foolish and useless worry as to what would
happen to the sheep, the dangers that would beset it, the thorns,
the precipices, the wolves. Nor did he count over the times he had
cautioned the sheep not to get away from its fellows. Granted that
it was conceited, self-willed, refused to listen to counsel,
disobedient--the main fact in the mind of the shepherd was that it was
lost, unprotected, in danger, afraid, cold, hungry, longing for the
sheepfold, the companionship of its fellows and the guardianship of
the shepherd. Hence, he went out eagerly and sympathetically, and
searched until he found it and brought it back to shelter.
This, then, should be the spirit of those who have needed my
caution and advice to quit their worrying about their loved ones and
others--Do not worry, but do not, under any consideration, become
hard-hearted, careless, or indifferent. Better by far preserve your
interest and the human tenderness that leads you to the useless and
needless expenditure of energy and sympathy in worry than that you
should let your loved ones suffer without any care, thought, or
endeavor on their behalf. But do not let it be a sympathy that leads
to worry. Let it be helpful, stimulating, directive, energizing in the
good. Overcome evil with good. Resist evil and it will flee from you.
So long as those you love are absorbed in the things that in the past
have led you to worry over them, be tender and sympathetic with them,
surround them with your holy and helpful love.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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