THE JOYS OF INDIGENCE

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 810, 2 November 1929, Page 10

THE JOYS OF INDIGENCE

THE QDIET CORNER

I Written for THE SUN by the Rev. Charles Chandler, Assistant City Missioner.) JJcHV few people there are who are rich enough to be poor; 1 cho have a sufficient intellectual and spiritual reserve to tide them over an economic crisis. Granted that happy marriages ai;e seldom the icsult of excelling in hollow logs (whatever love-sick youth's and maidens mag have to say to the contrary), still, one’s education is not really complete until one has faced the world with nothing save one suit of clothes and a good character. St. Francis, the lAttle Man of Assisi, xcas said to have revelled- in poverty, hence, poverty became a part of the three-fold, voxv which all Franciscans had to take upon entering that Order. A xccll-known legend tells of an unhappy king rclio wanted to wear the shirt of the happiest man in his kingdom, that he might becoxne happy by contagion. When the happiest man xvas found it was discovered that he was minus that most necessary of all male garments. He only knows how to be rich xcho has first learned how to be poor. St. Paul said: “I know hoxc U> be abased, and I know how to abound: everywhere, and in all things, 7 am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need." In other words, he lived self-reliantly, and preserved a lighthouse imperturbability in the midst of every circumstance. There is a positive joy to be had front having one’s immediate future hidden in the clouds of uncertainty. To be “momentarily expecting that something xcill undoubtedly turn up" adds a joy to life, that is hardly knoxcxi to those xchose affairs arc more comfortablx / ordered. The joys of indigence are wrought from contemplations, and from, strivixig after things beyond our reach. NEXT WEEK: . OUT OF CALVARY f"