Christian fiction; Neighborhoods -- Scotland -- Fiction
"I will try to make you see what I mean, my pet. No talk about an idea
that you never had in your head at all, can make you have that idea. If
you had never seen a horse, no description even, not to say no amount
of remark, would bring the figure of a horse before your mind. Much
more is this the case with truths that belong to the convictions and
feelings of the heart. Suppose a man had never in his life asked God
for anything, or thanked God for anything, would his opinion as to what
David meant in one of his worshipping psalms be worth much? The whole
thing would be beyond him. If you have never known what it is to have
care of any kind upon you, you cannot understand what our Lord means
when he tells us to take no thought for the morrow."
"But indeed, papa, I am very full of care sometimes, though not perhaps
about to-morrow precisely. But that does not matter, does it?"
"Certainly not. Tell me what you are full of care about, my child, and
perhaps I can help you."
"You often say, papa, that half the misery in this world comes from
idleness, and that you do not believe that in a world where God is at
work every day, Sundays not excepted, it could have been intended that
women any more than men should have nothing to do. Now what am I to do?
What have I been sent into the world for? I don't see it; and I feel
very useless and wrong sometimes."
"I do not think there is very much to complain of you in that respect,
Connie. You, and your sister as well, help me very much in my parish.
You take much off your mother's hands too. And you do a good deal for
the poor. You teach your younger brothers and sister, and meantime you
are learning yourselves."
"Yes, but that's not work."
"It is work. And it is the work that is given you to do at present. And
you would do it much better if you were to look at it in that light.
Not that I have anything to complain of."
"But I don't want to stop at home and lead an easy, comfortable life,
when there are so many to help everywhere in the world."
"Is there anything better in doing something where God has not placed
you, than in doing it where he has placed you?"
"No, papa. But my sisters are quite enough for all you have for us to
do at home. Is nobody ever to go away to find the work meant for her?
You won't think, dear papa, that I want to get away from home, will
you?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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