YOU ARE MORE THAN BODY OR MIND.
We have talked of your body and your mind, but as yet not of yourself.
You are not body; you are not mind; but you possess both. You are
spirit, created by God, who is spirit; therefore you are His child.
You may not have thought much of this fact, but that has not changed
the fact. No failure to recognize God as your father changes His
relationship to you. No conduct of yours can make you any less His
child.
"Well," you may say, "if that is so, what does it matter, then, what I
do? If disobedience or sin cannot make me less God's child, why should
I be good and obedient?" Because, dear heart, your conduct changes
your attitude towards Him. You might not know that I am your mother;
you might know it and choose to disobey my wishes; yet in both cases I
should still be your mother, and no more or less in one case than in
the other. But you will have no difficulty in understanding that in
one case you would be a loving, helpful, obedient daughter, a comfort
and delight to me; in the other, a disobedient, willful, unloving
daughter, a care and trouble.
We are God's children, each of us, dependent on His love and bounty
for protection, food, friends, intellect, even life. Is it dignified
and noble in us to ignore and disobey Him? Indeed the most worthy and
dignified thing we can do is to recognize ourselves as God's children
and be obedient. It is a wonderful glory to be a child of God. It
means that we have Godlike powers. The children of human parents are
like them in their capacities. Children of God must have capacities
that are Godlike.
This is true even of the most ignorant or degraded. They have in
themselves divine possibilities.
If you can get this thought fully engrafted into your consciousness,
it seems to me you can never willfully do wrong, can never condescend
to a mean or ignoble deed, because you recognize your divine
inheritance, and feel compelled by it to live truly, nobly.
Being children of God puts on us certain obligations towards Him, but
it also puts on God certain obligations towards us. "What!" you say;
"God the Infinite under obligations to man, the finite? The Creator
under obligations to the created?" Oh, yes.
We recognize the fact that human parents are under obligations to care
for their children, to protect them, to educate them, to give them
opportunities. Even such are the obligations of God towards His human
children, and He fulfills them. All our earthly blessings are from His
hand. Home, friends, shelter, food, are gifts of His love. He takes
such minute care of us that if for one second of time He would forget
us, we should be annihilated. He educates us. He does not send us away
to a boarding-school where we hear from Him but seldom, but He has a
home-school where He is both Father and Teacher, and His methods of
instruction are divinely wise.
The injudicious love of earthly parents often induces them to do for
their children things it would be far better to let the children do
for themselves. I once knew a boy of seven years, as intelligent as
the ordinary child, who had never been allowed to go down stairs alone
in his life for fear he would fall. This unwise care of the parents
had resulted in the child's being timid, fearful, and unable to care
for himself. He would cry if he fell, and would lie still sobbing
until some one came to pick him up and quiet him with caresses. At the
same time I saw a boy of four who could run up and down stairs, go to
the store alone to make purchases, and who, if he fell, would jump up
quickly, saying, "O, that didn't hurt." Which child had been better
protected--the one who had been cared for by an overindulgent parent,
or the one who, by judicious stimulation to self-help, had learned to
care for himself?
God teaches us how to help ourselves, and circumstances of life which
we so often think hard and cruel are only the means by which we are
being trained to be strong. The things we call failure, worriment, and
hardship, are only the little tumbles by which we are learning to
walk.
The heathen philosopher, Seneca, says: "God gives His best scholars
the hardest lessons." We know how proud we would feel if our
school-teacher would say, "This is a hard problem, but I believe you
can solve it." We would be stimulated to work night and day to justify
his confidence in our ability. But when a little trial comes in life
we are quite apt to say, "God is so hard in His dealings with me. Why
should He be so unkind?" instead of saying: "These hard things of life
are a test of my scholarship, and are an evidence of my Teacher's
confidence in my ability."
I would like you to get this thought fixed in your mind so firmly that
you will feel sure that all circumstances of life are but lessons in
God's great school, and, rightly used, will be the means of promoting
you to higher grades.
No scholar wants to stay always in the primary department because it
is easy there. He welcomes each promotion, although he knows it means
harder lessons and new difficulties. He looks forward to college or
university with pride, even though lessons grow harder and harder.
God's school of earthly life has in it all grades of advancement. Will
you be a studious, courageous scholar and try to learn life's lessons
well? It is such a wonderful thing to be a child of God, for that
means to be an heir of God, an heir of His wisdom, His strength, His
glory, His powers. "All things are yours," says Paul; "life, death,
things present and things to come, all are yours, and ye are Christ's,
and Christ is God's."