Then the spirit of altruism begins to awaken. She is no longer a
_little_ girl. She begins to understand the meaning of _sacrifice_, she
is stirred with the desire to serve. Christ the Messiah, the Savior and
Master, claims her interest and her heart is filled with desire to serve
and to prove her love to Him. She pledges herself to His service,
strives to be faithful, suffers agonies of remorse over her failures.
Among all the hosts who follow Him there are none more loyal and loving
than this girl in her teens.
The years pass and in the later teens and early twenties another world
forces itself upon the girl. It is the world of sin and evil, of
selfishness, greed and hypocrisy. She shrinks from it but it is bound to
be revealed. She catches a glimpse of a world of suffering and pain that
makes her heart ache. And while these worlds are pressing hard she is
plunging into the secrets of things. The revelation of biology,
astronomy, chemistry, the history of peoples, languages and books, the
science of economics, and the mysteries of psychology are demanding
consideration. Something happens to the bright, sweet unquestioned
faith. Questions persist, doubts suggest themselves and demand answer.
Nature asks "What do you think about me?" The problems of sin and
sickness, accident and injustice ask "How do you explain us?" and
darkness settles over the girl's spirit. Sometimes she refuses to think
things out and accepts the new explanations of things whatever they
happen to be, turning in cynicism from the old. But more often she does
think--asking the old questions she faced as a little girl all over
again out of a larger world and a trained mind. "Who made God?--what was
the very beginning of beginnings?" she asks. "Is it some _one_ or some
_thing_?" "What is Death and what is after that? How am I to _know_?"
Soul, mind and spirit cry out for concrete proof of that which can never
be concretely proven.
The thing she needs just here, is the very thing she is most often
denied. She needs some one who can show to her the larger God and the
greater Christ for her larger world and greater thought. She is losing
or has lost her smaller conceptions in the maze of wonders which have
been revealed to mind and heart. She needs to know that she has not lost
her God, rather is she just beginning to discover Him; that she has not
lost her Christ, instead the Christ is just beginning to be revealed to
her in all His greatness. She needs some one to make clear to her the
meaning of the promise, "_Seek_ and ye shall find. Knock and it shall be
opened unto you." From a new view-point with a larger horizon she may
be helped to begin her trustful search for God knowing that truth can
never lead away from God. She is just a girl but the Universe is hers in
which to seek Him. Its laws, as fast as she can discover them, are her
servants to lead her to Him and its broadening horizons but bring her
nearer.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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