WITHERING AND FADING

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 75, Issue 178, 30 July 1932, Page 13 (Supplement)

WITHERING AND FADING

AND GOD

(11.G.G.) The scene from my window is enchantingly beautiful. All the landscape is Hosted white and the sun is making Ruapehu’s snowy mantle glisten. Baek to my mind comes an experience from an occasion when I travelled in mid-winter from the far south of the Dominion to the far north. In the north children were swinging on willows which were decked in their early spring dress of delicate green. Gorgeous anemones and glowing daffodils were making the gardens gay. Returning south, 1 entered into frost and chilling rain and driving snow—into all the rigours of a severe winter. The trees were bare and the gardens desolate. Yet God is the Controller and Author of both, said a preacher to me in the course of an inspiring article. There is a movement of God, he said, in tho withering of things as truly as in their upspringing. “The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away.’ ’

The message of the preacher and my own thinking thereon have often proved a help and comfort to my own mind and heart, so 1 take this opportunity of passing them on. Where the word of the preacher ends and mine begins, it is impossible for me now to say.

Many of us find jt easy to believe in a Divine Providence when spring causes all nature to pulsate with life, but wo find it somewhat difficult when frosts wither and fierce blasts strip the branches bare. That God has made spring and summer and autumn we can quite readily believe; but to say, “God hath made winter” —well! Yet the old Bible writers were constantly recording that God is the Controller and the Author of all the seasons. The withering as truly as the springing come from God, not from some demon let Iqosc in the universe to do his devastating work. “He commandeth and raiseth the stormy wind which lifteth up the waves,” and “He maketh the storm a calm so that the waves thereof are still.” We scarcely realise that. With all our modern contrivances for protecting ourselves from the weather there are few people who speak well of a thoroughly wet day. All sorts of abusive epithets are hurled, by excellent people, against the weather. All kinds of melancholy reflections are indulged in when the flowers disappear and autumn wears into winter. Sonic of you may recall these lines from on old hymn:—

Stern winter throws his icy chains, Encircling Nature round; How bleak, how comfortless the plains Late with gay verdure crowned! The sun withdraws his vital beams, And light and warmth depart; And drooping, lifeless Nature seems An emblem of my heart.

Thus our time of trouble, of affliction or misfortune is not often the time of our rejoicing; oftencr it is the dismal winter of discontent.

My heart, where mental winter reigns, In night’s dark mantle clad, Confined in cold, inactive chains How desolate and sad!

Well, here is the faith of the saints in the Old Testament and the New.

“The grass ' withcrcth, the flower fadeth, because the breath of the Lord blowcth upon it.” The withering up of even beautiful things may be the work of the Spirit of God. We can believe that of bad things. We can understand the great message of John the Baptist. “The axe is laid to the root of the tree; the fan of the Son ol God shall thoroughly purge His floor, and He shall burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.” Yet every reform carries in its breast suffering for some people. You cannot destroy even an evil industry without, causing distress. But it is the withering and fading of the good and beautiful, the grass and flowers of life, that troubles us. The taking away of earthly good and enjoyment is always a perplexity. Can wo by searching find any solution/ Docs our personal experience give any clue to the mystery of Divine Providence? The preacher to whom 1 referred put forward two helpful considerations.

First a “good” may have to give place to a greater good. The truth conveyed by the most beautiful ol Robert Browning’s lyrics immediately came into my thoughts. An organist sits at the keyboard in the gathering dust. His fingers wander hither and thither as he extemporises in reverie. Gradually a magnificent palace ot music is reared on the landscape ot his imagination. But he cannot reach to the fulness of the Infinite. The grand palace tumbles. The musician turns to God who is builder and maker of houses not. made with hands. He rejoices that in God

‘There shall never be one lost good! What was shall live as before; The evil is null, is nought, is silence implying sound; What was good shall be good, with, for evil, so much good more; On earth the broken arcs; in the heaven a perfect round.”

He glories that all we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good, shall exist, not in semblance, but its very self. As his fingers continue to wan dor over the keys, the music forms the questions:

“What is our failure here but a triumph's evidence For the fulness of the days? Have we withered and agonised? Why else was the paused prolonged but that, singing might, issue thence? Why rushed the. discords in. but that harmony might be prized?”

Now turn to the prophet Isaiah. He tells us in a few terse phrases the experience of his soul. As a young man he was captured by the pomp and circumstance of earthly royalty. He found it good. His whole life was bound up in the. king of his nation. Then Uzziah died. The youth of this young man was buried with him. It was a

“mangled youth.” But he lost the princeling to find the King —“In the year that King Uzziah died 1 saw the

Lord ’’ 'Phe regal splendour of earth was made to fade in I lie majestic \is ion of the Holiest of all. The glow and glitter of a temporal throne was sup planted by the glory of the Eternal—“the whole earth is full of His glory.’' In the Upper Room the Disciples were puzzled ami anxious about the Master’s words regarding llis depar turn. “Arise, fi He said, “let us go hence.” They were afraid of whore “hence’’ might bo. Timo and export once taught them that the departure of the Word in the Elesh meant a coming of the Spirit to abide in the life. Truly the “good” gave place to a greater good. (To be continued.)