Everyman’s Hut

Camp News (Northern Command), Volume 1, Issue 12, 19 July 1940, Page 6

Everyman’s Hut

— “0 Joy, that seekest me through pain, I cannot close my heart to Thee,. I trace the rainbow through the rain, And feel the promise is not vain That morn shall tearless be.” To many hearts throughout the world to-day the prospect the dawning of a tearless morn is very, very remote. The sorrow, anguish and suffering that has befallen so many countries has blotted out all joy and happiness, hope has given away to

despair, for many the sun seems to have ceased to shine, and it seems almost beyond belief that the darkness will ever give place to another. dawn at all, and most assuredly not to a dawn that 'will have nothing of tears in it. Yet what warrant have we for adopting this attitude? Throughout the ages there has always been suffering and despair, and yet there has sprung from them happiness and joy, and even to-day the sorrow and tears caused by the sacrifices of war are tempered by the knowledge that the loved one mourned for has died gloriously in the cause of liberty and justice. If we look through our. tears at the sun, they are tinted with the hues of the rainbow, and should not this teach us that if

we in our deepest trials and sorrows will only look to Him, who is the source of light, to Him, who on earth said: “I am the light of the world,” then those very trials' and sorrows will take on the hues of heaven itself, and just as the rainbow is the token i that • the world will never more be overwhelmed by a flood, so that sight will be the pledge that our sorrows will not overwhelm us, but that there will dawn a “bright and glorious morning” in which all tears shall be wiped away.

■, What is needed amongst us to-day is the spirit of the three young Hebrew men, who, when given the choice of renouncing the living God and bowing down to an image or else being cast into the fire, said to the king “Our God, whom we trust, ,is able to deliver us from the fire, but even ; if it is His purpose to allow us to be .cast into the fire, be it known unto thee, 0 King, we will not bow down to. your image,” and through the affliction of the fiery furnace they emerged to greater honour than if they had been spared. And in our day of trial, let us, as a nation now standing alone, look not. to any nation, east or west, as a source of help, but let us look, like David, to the living God of the armies of Israel, with humbleness of heart, and all the armaments in the world will not prevail against us, and secure in His

• strength we will be able to look forward to the rising of the Sun of Righteousness" and the dawning of a “morn that shall tearless be.” V-;' We are sure that Mr. Les Taylor’s last night at the Hut will remain long in his memory, as the men showed their appreciation of Mrs. Taylor’s and his services for them and we only regret that Mrs. Taylor was not able to be present. Our prayers and best wishes follow them to the North. ' Mr. Gordon Blair is well settled in again making up leeway with the ' Thirds and on Sunday evening he | spoke to an attentive audience from the 3rd Chapter of John, citing Nicodemus as one who though he had . » ■■

great head knowledge of the Old Testament teachings, yet had to receive that knowledge., in the’ heart ere he could enter heaven and urging the men to look to the Son of Man, lifted up “as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness,” “that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have eternal life.”