Brace yourself friends, this stuff is rich, please read it all, its worth it! I was reading in Christ of Every Road by E. Stanley Jones (highly recommend anything this man writes) a couple of days ago and these paragraphs have stuck with me, so I wanted to share them. Ok here we go...
"Joy of the Spirit is no cheap joy. It has scars on it -- radiant scars! It is joy won out of the heart of pain. Those who know it have found one of life's deepest and most transforming secrets: the transmuting (transform) of pain into a paean (any song of praise, joy or triumph). Sorrow becomes not something to escape; WE CAN MAKE IT SING! We can set our tears to music, and no music is so exquisite, so completing. The early Christian learned immediately and at once the truth which the philosopher Royce puts in these words: 'Such ills we remove only as we assimilate them, idealize them, take them up into the plan of our lives, give them meaning, set them in their place in the whole.' When their heartstrings were stretched upon some cross of pain and the winds of persecution blew through them, then from this human Aeolian harp men heard the very music of God. THEY DID NOT BEAR PAIN, THEY USED IT!"
Good huh? One more!
"In a Friends' meeting in Vienna I found myself rising and saying: 'For many years I have worn a cross upon my heart, and this cross has made me. But recently it has been lifted and I miss it and I find myself asking for another cross.' 'What a terrible prayer to pray!' said a friend walking out of the meeting. Yes, it was, but it would have been more terrible not to pray it, this, if we want to know the fourth dimension of life (which is pain, he talked about it earlier in the chapter). I found myself praying recently, "If wounds must come, I have only one request to make about them--let them be clean wounds." If we can keep away from our wounds the infection of complaint and sourness of spirit, they will heal quickly and leave glorious scars!"
AAAAAAH, that stuff is soo good. Turning pain into a joyous song, who would have thought?
"Joy of the Spirit is no cheap joy. It has scars on it -- radiant scars! It is joy won out of the heart of pain. Those who know it have found one of life's deepest and most transforming secrets: the transmuting (transform) of pain into a paean (any song of praise, joy or triumph). Sorrow becomes not something to escape; WE CAN MAKE IT SING! We can set our tears to music, and no music is so exquisite, so completing. The early Christian learned immediately and at once the truth which the philosopher Royce puts in these words: 'Such ills we remove only as we assimilate them, idealize them, take them up into the plan of our lives, give them meaning, set them in their place in the whole.' When their heartstrings were stretched upon some cross of pain and the winds of persecution blew through them, then from this human Aeolian harp men heard the very music of God. THEY DID NOT BEAR PAIN, THEY USED IT!"
Good huh? One more!
"In a Friends' meeting in Vienna I found myself rising and saying: 'For many years I have worn a cross upon my heart, and this cross has made me. But recently it has been lifted and I miss it and I find myself asking for another cross.' 'What a terrible prayer to pray!' said a friend walking out of the meeting. Yes, it was, but it would have been more terrible not to pray it, this, if we want to know the fourth dimension of life (which is pain, he talked about it earlier in the chapter). I found myself praying recently, "If wounds must come, I have only one request to make about them--let them be clean wounds." If we can keep away from our wounds the infection of complaint and sourness of spirit, they will heal quickly and leave glorious scars!"
AAAAAAH, that stuff is soo good. Turning pain into a joyous song, who would have thought?
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