REVELATION

It seems to me that life is absolutely futile and incomplete until we realize that no matter what we are doing, or whither going, it is because of some preconceived reason; and that in the end, when we have reached the last turning of the road and come to lay down our wearying burdens, no matter what our regrets through life may have been—we will know and fully comprehend that the tending of our footsteps this or that way was merely the working out of a great end. The orientation of our views is so limited and circumscribed that, when something comes to us which we have not desired, we can only feel the bearing down of a cruel fate upon our heads. And too often we toss those same heads back in stubborn despair and grind our teeth in the gale of what must be— thereby losing our balance and sense of what might be had we the courage to entwine our strength with that of the Infinite! Many times the inveiglement of an idea—a set idea which perhaps we have nourished in our hearts for days—will keep us from all realization of the good we might gain by a different shaping of our lives from that which we had dreamed. To some of us the revelation never comes; and we go on pursuing life with our noses pressed to the ground, without a glimmer of comprehension of the great and superfine machine which marks out and registers our lives. To others, who are perhaps more worthy, the revelation does come, and usually during or after our darkest hours. It is indeed a proof of the Divine that we should receive light after darkness! To these same it is strange how sometimes it will come slowly like the rising of the moon, and then again quickly as a flood of sunlight after a darkening cloud has passed. In the sad or desperate moments of our lives when indeed we see nothing to go on for— when we are torn and spent and there seems no end to the coursing of the blood from out our hearts—it is then that the knowledge in a flash comes to us, that there must be a reason, and that we could not be made to suffer so without an ultimate beneficial purpose. And so all striving seems puerile and we cease to beat our wings against the cage, lift our torn hearts instead to the sweet rain of heaven and ask to see the star that may guide us. And, as small children who, seeing not, obey, so we too, set forth; and, although unconsciously, in our faith become as sages.