SUNDAY COLUMN

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 62, Issue 88, 24 January 1942, Page 3

SUNDAY COLUMN

DEVOTIONAL READING. (Conducted by the Ashburton Ministers’ Association). A GOOD MIXER. The only thing to do when people “get on our nerves” is to get them off our nerves as quickly as possible. When people get on our corns, it is a situation which they themselves are generally glad to rectify. But when people get on our nerves there is very little they can do about it. The task falls almost entirely to us. We ought not to let people get on our nerves, and, if they do, we ought to know how to get them off. I am concerned here-not with “the mystery of iniquity” nor with the genuine “bad hats’ who are to be found occasionally, but with the decent, irritating, exasperating, well-meaning folk with whom we have constantly to deal. How can we like them? How can we enjoy their company? How can we so get on with them that they never get on our nerves ?

The first, thing to do is to get away from any feeling that people are sent into the world to minis'ter to our pleasure, and that, if we do not like them, they are very much to blame. God made them, and God loves them; that ought to be enough for us. In any case, if we dislike them, the fault lies very largely with us, and we may be quite certain we have not understood them. These people who are so exasperating would generally seem pathetic, if we looked at them more understandingly, remembered their background, had an eye for their inward struggles, and considered whether in their place we should not be far worse or perhaps we are far worse already! We generally dislike most intensely those unattractive traits in others of which we are secretly most conscious in ourselves. If you want to like somebody or to be patient with him, pray for him. That is the sovereign remedy. But be careful how you do it! It is no use saying (in your own words), “O Lord, how revolting he is; do, please, make him less odious”; That is conceit, not prayer. Try to see him as Christ sees him, and your heart insensibly will be melted towards him. You cannot go on disliking a person whose good points you have tried to see, into whose difficulties and struggles and needs and longings you have entered by imagination and sympathy, whose failures are your sorrow, and whose true good you ardently desire.

Then remember that it takes two to tell the truth. Your interlocutor must be made to understand what you mean and not merely what you say. If he is in a bad mood he will twist and misinterpret and resent your words. Get him first, therefore, into a good mood. That you do by really caring for him, genuinely appreciating his often hidden troubles and evoking a cheerful response from him. Talk about the weather and his children till he is spiritually ready po listen to what you have to say to him.

Most of us are like children; we need managing; we need deliverance from the sulks. Christians ought to be over those childish complaints (which they call “nerves”); they must have “a heart at leisure from itself to soothe and sympathise.” Blessed are the peace-makers. And blessed are they whose hearts are so on their neighbours that they have no time or thought for personal resentments and small dislikes! —“Ilico” in “British Weekly.”

A TOWN WHERE NO-ONE WOULD LIKE TO LIVE. The towil without a church—'■what a lonesome spot it would be! Few would want to live there —still fewer would dare; to bring up a family in a place where the spiritual side of life was so completely neglected. Mankind cannot be content -without some means of expressing the religious impulse and anything which develops and deepens this impulse is a priceless contribution to the progress of the church. Thoughtful observers agree that the value of the church press is beyond estimate. By loyally supporting the church paper of your choice you are in effect aiding the church itself —and thus encouraging the spread of the finest aspirations and impulses known to man. —“Associated Church Press.”

REFLECTIONS. On Suffering. “Pain makes the sufferer exceedingly sensitive.” “It is a matter of experience that he who has suffered little enjoys little.” “Suffering-is the payment that joy demands.” •—Sir Francis Younghusband.. On David Livingstone. London “Punch’s” centenary recalled a happy line from “Punch’s” memorial for David Livingstone: ‘“Let marble crumble! This is living stone.” On Archaeology. “Archaeology has not yet said its last word; but the results already achieved confirm what faith would suggest, that the Bible can do nothing but gain from an increase of knowledge.”—Sir Frederic Kenyon, sometime Director of the British Museum. On Revelation.

Why has Christianity failed to discharge its high responsibility in the Western world? In answering this question in his book, “What is Christianity?” Dr. C. C. Morrison writes, “1 think the deepest reason for its delinquency is that the Christian church has not adequately understood either itself or its faith that it has compromised Christianity with that which is not Christianity, that it has lost, its bearings by its substitution of man foi God and of its own ideology for the revelation of God ih history. There

is one thing greater than any truth which man can know, and that is the revelation of God.” On Thinking. “A man is not what men think lie is,” Mr W. F. Betts said, in an address in Melbourne recently, “but as he thinks, he is,”