God's Winter Plants By J.R. Miller

Making the Most of Life: Chapter 22 - God's Winter Plants


By J.R. Miller


"The wind that blows can never kill
The tree God plants;
It bloweth east; it bloweth west;
The tender leaves have little rest,
But any wind that blows is best.
The tree God plants
Strikes deeper root, grows higher still,
Spreads wider boughs, for God's good-will
Meets all its wants."
--LILLIE E. BARR.

One of the papers tells of a newly discovered flower. It is called the snow-flower. It has been found in the northern part of Siberia. The plant shoots up out of the ice and frozen soil. It has three leaves, each about three inches in diameter. They grow on the side of the stem toward the north. Each of the leaves appears to be covered with little crystals of snow. The flower, when it opens, is star-shaped, its petals being of the same length as the leaves, and about half an inch in width. On the third day the extremities of the anthers show minute glistening specks, like diamonds, which are the seeds of this wonderful flower.

Is not this strange snow-flower an illustration of many Christian lives? God seems to plant them in the ice and snow; yet they live and grow up out of the wintry cold into fair and wondrous beauty. We should say that the loveliest lives of earth would be those that are reared amid the gentlest, kindliest influences, under summer skies, in the warm atmosphere of ease and comfort. But the truth is that the noblest developments of Christian character are grown in the wintry garden of hardship, struggle, and sorrow.

Trial should not, therefore, be regarded with discouragement, as something which will stunt and dwarf the life and mar its beauty. It should be accepted rather, when it comes, as part of God's discipline, through which he would bring out the noblest and best possibilities of our character. Perhaps we would be happier for the time if we had easier, more congenial conditions. Children might be happier without restraint, without family government, without chastening--just left to grow up into all wilfulness and waywardness. But there is something better in life than present happiness. 

Disciplined character in manhood, even though it has been gotten through stern and severe home-training, is better than a childhood and youth of unrestraint, with a worthless manhood as the outcome. A noble life, bearing God's image, even at the price of much pain and self-denial, is better than years of freedom from care and sacrifice with a life unblessed and lost at the end. "To serve God and love him," says one, "is higher and better than happiness, though it be with wounded feet and bleeding hands and heart loaded with sorrow."

"So much we miss
If love is weak; so much we gain
If love is strong. God thinks no pain
Too sharp or lasting to ordain
To teach us this."

It is well that we should understand how to receive trial so as to get from its hard experience the good it has for us. For one thing, we should accept it always reverently. 

Resistance forfeits the blessing which can be yielded only to the loving, submissive spirit. Teachableness is the unvarying condition of learning. To rebel against trial is to miss whatever good it may have brought for us. There are some who resent all severity and suffering in their lot as unkindness in God. These grow no better under divine chastening, but instead are hurt by it. When we accept the conditions of our life, however hard, as divinely ordained, and as the very conditions in which, for a time, we will grow the best, we are ready to get from them the blessing and good intended in them for us.

Another important suggestion is that we faint not under trial. There are those who give up and lose all their courage and faith when trouble comes. They cannot endure suffering. Sorrow crushes them. They break down at once under a cross and think they never can go on again. There have been many lives crushed by affliction or adversity, which have not risen again out of the dust. 

There have been mothers, happy and faithful before, out of whose home one child has been taken, and who have lost all interest in life from that day, letting their home grow dreary and desolate and their other children go uncared for, as they sat with folded hands in the abandonment of their despairing, uncomforted grief. There have been men with bright hopes, who have suffered one defeat or met with one loss, and then have let go in their discouragement and have fallen into the dust of failure, never trying to rise again.

Nothing is sadder in life than such yieldings. They are unworthy of immortal beings. The divine intention in trial never is to crush us, but always to do good to us in some way, to bring out in us new energy of life. Whatever the loss, struggle, or sorrow, we should accept it in love, humility, and faith, take its lessons, and then go on into the life that is before us. When one child is taken out of a home, the mother should, with more reverent heart and more gentle hand, turn the whole energy of her chastened life into love's channels, living more than ever before for her home and the children that are left to her. The man who has felt the stunning blow of a sudden grief or loss should kiss the hand of God that has smitten, and quickly arise and press onward to the battles and duties before him. 

We should never accept any defeat as final. Though it be in life's last hours, with only a mere fringe of margin left, and all our past failure and loss, still we should not despair.

"What though the radiance which was once so bright,
Be now forever taken from my sight;
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower,
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind."

There is nowhere any better illustration of the way we should always rise again out of trial than we have in the life of St. Paul. From the day of his conversion till the day of his death, trouble followed him. He was misunderstood; he was cast out for Christ's sake; he met persecution in every form; he was shipwrecked; he lay in dungeons; he was deserted by his friends. But he never fainted, never grew discouraged, never spoke one word about giving up. "Cast down, but not destroyed," was the story of his life. He quickly arose out of every trial, every adversity, with a new light in his eye, a new enthusiasm in his heart. He could not be defeated, for he had Christ in him. Shall we not catch St. Paul's unconquerable spirit, that we may never faint in any trial?

It requires faith to meet trouble and adversity heroically. Undoubtedly, at the time, the blessing is not apparent in the sorrow or the defeat. All seems disastrous and destructive. It is in the future, in the outworking, that the good is to come. It is a matter of faith, not of sight. "All chastening seemeth for the present to be not joyous, but grievous; yet afterward it yieldeth peaceable fruit unto them that have been exercised thereby, even the fruit of righteousness." Oh, the blessing of God's "afterwards"! 

Jacob one day thought and said that all things were against him, but afterward he saw that his great afflictions and losses were wrought in as parts of a beautiful plan of love for him. The disciples thought that the cross was the destruction of all their Messianic hopes; afterward they saw that it was the very fulfilment of these hopes. 

The pruning, which at the time cuts so into the life of the vine, lopping off great, rich branches, afterward is seen to have been the saving and enriching of the whole vine. So we always need faith. We must believe against appearances.

"Under the fount of ill
Many a cup doth fill,
And the patient lip, though it drinketh oft,
Finds only the bitter still.

"Nevertheless, I know,
Out of the dark must grow,
Sooner or later, whatever is fair,
Since the heavens have willed it so."

Back and forth the plough was driven. The field was covered with grasses and lovely flowers, but remorselessly through them all the share tore its way, cutting furrow after furrow. It seemed that all the beauty was being hopelessly destroyed. But by and by harvest-time came, and the field waved with golden wheat. That was what the ploughman's faith saw from the beginning.

Sorrow seems to destroy the life of a child of God. Its rude share ploughs again and again through it, making many a deep furrow, gashing its beauty. But afterward a harvest of blessing and good grows up out of the crushed and broken life. That is what God intends always in trial and sorrow.

Let us have the ploughman's faith, and we shall not faint when the share is driven through our heart. Then by faith we shall see beyond the pain and trial the blessing of richer life, of whiter holiness, of larger fruitfulness. And to win that blessing will be worth all the pain and trial.