"...You have heard it said more than once that everything depends on the spirit with which we face things. When the storm strikes a rooster, he folds up; he just endures it, wrapping his wings about him to protect himself as best he can, just drooping through to the dreary end. When the storm strikes an eagle, he has another spirit; he spreads his wings and makes the winds carry him high above the storm. The same choice is ours. Blowing on all of us are the winds of opposition. Breaking in on all of us are the disturbing changes of life.... We can choose the spirit with which we face them. We can endure them or we can employ them. We can be irritated by them or we can be stimulated by them to strike for higher altitude....
"We see it all through the New Testament. Look again at the interruptions of Jesus, even the minor ones. He didn't merely endure them; He employed them, and used every one of them to promote the purposes of God. When the man out of the crowd broke in on His teachings, He used the interruption to heighten His teaching. When the Pharisees broke in with their ugly criticism of His morals—eating, as they said, with publicans and sinners—He did not merely endure their criticism, He employed it; He took their nasty insinuations, which were meant to discredit Him, and made them the sounding board for the loveliest story in all literature—the story of the Prodigal Son....Every interruption He accepted as a divine opportunity; every ugly thing He transformed into something beautiful. Even the Cross, which was the utmost interruption meant to destroy Him and His purpose forever, provided Him with a force by which He lifted men to the very heights of God."
Ride the Wild Horses! ,
pp. 143-145. Copyright 1952, Fleming H. Revell Company,
Westwood, NJ. Reprinted with permission of
Florence N. Hamilton.
