Everyman’s Hut

Camp News (Northern Command), Volume 1, Issue 20, 13 September 1940, Page 8

Everyman’s Hut

“Some time when all life’s lessons have been learned, And sun and stars for evermore have set, The things which our weak judgment here have spurned, The things o’er which we grieved with lashes wet, Will flash before us out of life’s dark night As stars shine bright in deeper tints of blue, And we shall see how all God’s plans were right, . j And how what seemed reproof was love most true.” When a man becomes a soldier and takes the oath of allegiance to his King, his life becomes ordered for him and his own desires and will become subject to the instruction of his Commanding Officer, whose instructions in turn are governed by circumstances over which he has no control. And so a soldier knows not from day to day ’what will transpire in his life. Planning goes by the board and he has to obey orders without question, but some day when the history of our times is written, all the various episodes, commands and countermands will fit together like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, and it will be seen that everything that was done, was done in the light of new happenings with the one object of safeguarding the men as far as humanly possible. But human knowledge and reasoning are not infallible or all-knowing and the future will reveal just how far decisions, made with the limited information available at the time, failed to achieve the objects for which they were made. And, in a wide sense, the lives of the human race are ordered on the same lines as a soldier’s. Not one of us can say with certainty what we will do to-morrow, or the next hour, for that matter. We plan and see all our plans upset by something that is beyond our control, until upon our minds is forced the truth of the Scripture that “We know not what a day may bring forth.” But there is one big difference the ordering of our lives and of a soldier’s life. Ours is ordered by One Who Knows the end from the beginning, Who is working according to pattern, and one day “We shall know even as also we are known.” Those who through faith in Christ have been brought into living relationship with God can rest in the assurance that “all things work together for good for those that love God,” and by faith they can leave the ordering of their lives in His hand, knowing that “no good King will He withhold” and that those things that are withheld are those that would have proved harmful. Last week was a busy one at the Hut with encouragement to Mr. Gordon Blair, and a sustained demand for Testaments. Sunday evening he spoke solemnly on the text “Behold I stand at the door and knock,” using, to -illustrate his talk, a slide of Holman Hunt’s famous painting “The Light of the World,” and we trust the message will prove a blessing to those who heard it.