QUIET HOUR

Hawera Star, Volume XLVI, 17 April 1926, Page 16

QUIET HOUR

THE LAST STRAW By Rev. 8. H. Wright

Old .Jacob cried out, when asked to let his youngest son go into Egypt: •‘AH these things are against me.” He had lost Joseph, and Simeon seemed to be lost'jfcthe thought of losing Benjamin was too much. It was the last straw; liis faith dissolved into a cry of despair. The truism is generally accepted that the last straw breaks the camel’s back. Each life has its breaking point, though tliiw varies with each. We can carry a certain load, but if an ounce more be added we give way. Tne last straw may. in itself be negligible, but on top of all we carry it. is too much. Pascal said that •in some moods even the alighting of a fly on his face was unbearable. Elijah laughs at priests and kings. But Jezebel threatens, and the man loses hope: “Now, O Lord, take away my life.' ’ A settler’s wife roughs it for years, triumphing over poverty and pain. Then one day a little thing goes wrong, the milk boils over. It was! the last straw; she went mad. The continued pressure, the increasing troubles, the added irritations or provocations become so heavy that a straw will tip the balance. Our pity is stirred at the thought of lives that snap and hearts that break. But if this were all we’ should have no gospel. The last straw need not be the last straw. Jacob’s story revals that it was for him the turning point. He brooded over his troubles, not knowing that his road was now veering round to happiness. He thought of the three sons he seemed likely to lose, forgetting the nine who remained to him. But this is natural, the wandering of the last sheep is always on a parent’s heart. Yet his cry was the cry of ignorance and unfaith. The restoration of Joseph and Simeon depended upon lotting Benjamin go, but he did not know this. We break down becausj we cannot see the end. Yet this risk must be run if faith and life are to be made perfect. To know all would be to rot into stagnation and death. The last straw is often God’s last test, the one thing that will make it possible for him to give us the best. When men and women look back, they see that good has come from that which was hard; out of the lion’s mouth they have gathered honey. God is able to give back to us our best, increased and enriched because we yielded our best to Him. The juniper tree was not Elijah’s destination; the angel in his heart would not let him go, so he fought on. Whicli reveals that the truly religious attitude is to deny that anything can be the end of hope. Faith never speaks of the last straw. We can compute thfi ( resistance of material things: the strain a bridge or a girder is able to carry. But life is not inert; it is elastic. It can expand as attacks are made upon it; it has resources which are endless. We cry the last straw only when we forget these resources. Paul in prison did what Jacob failed to do, he argued from God’s working in the past, so iie could say: the things which happened unto me have fallen out rather unto the progress of the gospel. His trial was yet to come, but he was not disheartened; the reinforcement of hhs faith enabled him to breast troubles as they came. The defeated who lose heart and so lose everything; the poor suicides who go under; they forget to take God into account. The moods which fasten on any trouble as the last straw must be fought against. Faith and hope are the great words for life, nor doubt and despair; and life’s best joys come to those who have the spirit of One who never turned his back but marched breast forward, Never; doubted clouds would break, Never dreamed, though - right were worsted', wrong would triumph, Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better,, Sleep to wake.