The Beauty of Self-Control: Chapter 15 - The Outflow of Song
By J.R. Miller
In one of his epistles, Paul gives an interesting suggestion for a beautiful life. He says, "let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; in all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs." The point to be noted is that the dwelling of the word of Christ in the heart produces a musical outflow, a life of song-- "psalms and hymns and spiritual songs."
The words suggest, in general, good and beautiful lives. Every such life is a song. In another of his epistles Paul says, "We are God's workmanship," and commentators tell us that the word workmanship means poem. "We are God's poem."
Poetry is supposed to be more beautiful than prose. It is characterized by fineness and loftiness of thought, and by charm and beauty of expression. It is not merely something in rhyme, as some writers seem to think. There are rhymes which do not make poetry. A life that is God's poem, should be very beautiful. We may not be able to write poetry, like Tennyson's, which will charm by its music and by its beauty--but we may live poems. We may not be able to write twenty-third psalms--but we can live them. We may make our life a sweet song. We do not need to be poets to do this. A very prosaic man may so live--that gentle music shall breathe from his life all his days. He needs only to be true and just and loving. There are people whose lives are so sweet, so patient, so gentle, so thoughtful, so unselfish, so helpful, and so full of quiet goodness, that they are exquisite poems. They may be plain, simple, without fame, without show, without brilliance--but the marks of God's hands are on them!
We are God's poems. Every beautiful life is a poem. There are people, living in conditions of hardness; whose lives we would say could not possibly have any music in them. Their circumstances are utterly prosaic, with no room for sentiment. Even home tenderness would appear to be impossible in their experiences of toil and pinching poverty. Yet even such lives as these, doomed to heavy work and dreary hardship, or constant pain, ofttimes do become poems in their beauty and winningness. There are many men who never have an hour's leisure or a bit of luxury in all their years, who yet please God continually by their faithfulness, their patience, their contentment, the peace of Christ in their hearts--whose lives are lovely songs. You may not find these poems in homes of luxury and splendor. There is more joy ofttimes in the plain cottages of those who are poor and love God--than in the mansions of the rich who care not for God. Their lives are poems. We find them as we go about these days, sometimes in sick rooms--they are uncomplaining, unmurmuring, singing in suffering; sometimes in experiences of loss and poverty--they are patient and trusting. In many a lowly home you will find poems finer than ever you read in books. The mother of Goethe used to say that when her son had a grief he turned it into a poem. He who knows the secret, may turn all his troubles into poems.
Another meaning of this description--"psalms and hymns and spiritual songs"--is that our lives should be joyous. God wants them to be songs. He wants them to be pure, sweet, gentle, and kind.
We get music into our lives, when we live sweetly in hard circumstances and amid trying experiences. Anybody ought to be able to live songfully in summer days, with flowers strewn all along the path, with only gladness on every hand. But to live rejoicingly in the midst of discouragements, hindrances, and all manner of trouble, is a truer test. The newspapers some time ago, told of a ship coming over from Germany in midwinter with a cargo of many thousand song birds. At the beginning of the voyage the weather was warm and clear. Not a bird sang in those days. Not a note of music was heard. The birds all seemed depressed and unhappy. But about the third day out it began to get colder, and soon the wind was blowing stiffly and there was stormy weather. Then the birds began to sing. Soon all the twenty five or thirty thousand little throats were pouring out song.
