Taken





Many Christian people despise the minute accessions of light and strength secured by daily study, vigilance, and effort. Because our increase in knowledge and energy is so slight as to be imperceptible we neglect the opportunities which promise so little. If we received sudden and splendid bursts of light, if our character blazed out in memorable transfigurations, if our work straightway bore a hundred-fold, we should be satisfied; but the atomic increment, the slight happy variation in our experience, an added grain of cell of life and force, are lightly esteemed. It is a mistake. The minute gain of daily faithfulness is in its significance immense.

The naturalist tells us that some flowers are curiously sensitive to a single degree of cold more or less; let the thermometer drop just half a degree too much, and the glories shrivel up black and dead as though they had passed through a furnace. The fatal 'half-degree' is the thing to escape or withstand. What havoc will the half-degree of intensified trouble and temptation work in the experience of the weak. On the contrary, how blessed are those who, a little stronger, can successfully defy heightened trial. Truth a trifle more clearly discerned; faith, enhanced as by a grain of mustard seed; love, clinging by an added tendril; and hope, the anchor of the soul, somewhat more surely biting the solid ground mean much in the history of the soul.

But difficulty of process does not mean uncertainty of issue. The end may be sure while the way is hard. This thought, in one form or another, has been set in proverbs. 'The mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceedingly small.' That is the Divine side of it. The grinding is slow and difficult, but God's mills never fail. 'Perseverance conquers all things.' That is the human side of it. Indeed, in a burst of enthusiasm resolution has been declared 'omnipotent.' Turning to Scriptures we find the thought phrased thus: 'Through much tribulation we enter into the kingdom of heaven.' The way to heaven is at a cost. It is over mountains and through seas. It is by hard battling, fierce conflict, struggle and heartaches, stress and pain, loss and cross, with exceeding great difficulty. But it is heaven at last or sure. It is through much tribulation the righteous enter into the kingdom, but they enter. 'I give unto them eternal life,' says Jesus, 'and they shall never perish.' St. Peter did not cast doubt upon the salvation of the righteous by his frank admission of the difficulty of it. He tells the Christians to whom he is writing that they are to meet fiery trial, that they are to be reproached for the name of Christ; but he bids them rejoice at this, pronounces them 'blessed' for it.

The things in Mathew 24 to me explain a lot of the last days. Our Lord said, 'Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.'

The last days will be just as the days of Noah. Some will be taken and some will be left. To my way of thinking, wouldn't it be better to be like Noah, left here, and not taken. Any takers???

Tim.