Thoughtful Moments

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 9, Issue 20, 2 November 1945, Page 2

Thoughtful Moments

(Supplied by the Whakatmus Ministers' Association}.

DISAPPOINTMENT STREET

He that believeth in Him shall not be disappointed.—l Peter 2:6.

How many of you have heard of Disappointment Street? If you look it up on the map of your town, you will probably have difficulty in finding it, but it is there. It is in every town ( and everyone at some time or another has to walk along it. No matter what the weather it is always rather damp and and the people one meets are apt to look rather sour. I have been down it several times. The iirst time I re. member was when 1 was a little boy looking forward very much to my first Sunday School picnic. How I hoped it would be a fine day, for we had to travel by and that was a great novelty; and we. were to eat our lunch in a great field by a river and that would be quite impossilole if it should rain. But rain it did! Not just a shall or shan't I? sort of a with "sunny intervals" as the weather reports say, but a real honest-to-. goodness downpour. Fancy eating lunch by a river in that!. I went for a long sad walk down Disappointment Street., It was. full of children, all looking very glum indeed, and some of them crying. But news came, into the street that we were to go to the hall anyway, and we wandered rather droopily along,, telling each other that nothing could make up for the picnic. The ball looked bright, and there were games, and plenty to eat, and paper hats and balloons—and up out of Disappointment Street we came with a rush. And no one went back there that day. Why we agreed on the way home, we could never have had so much lun at the picnic!

That is the way if often happens in Disappointment if you don't give way too much. There was a gniat man —Sir Walter Scott. He had to walk in that street. Alhe was famous as a Avriter when he decided to take a share, in a business J'or printing books. He had plenty of money and everyone thought well of him. Then came disappointment. The business failed _ and all his money went with it, and he found that he owed great sums of money to various people— at least the business did and he 3 . ' fe.lt he was responsible for it. £12(^000 —who could hope ever to pay so much? But Sir Walter had a brave spirit. Sitting down and thinking it he wrote in his dairy that if God gave him strength lie-would write books and sell them till it was all paid oil'. And then lie set to work. Day after day from early morning till far into the nighty lie worked away. He took a little bedroom right above his study so that he would be handy to his work. T have seen the. study and the little stair leading to his bedroom, and the chair in which he sat ? and it is wonderful to think of all the work that went on there. And the day came at last when he owed no man anything! He would feel pretty good that day ! And what was it he

OUR SUNDAY MESSAGE

was writing all those years? The books we call the Waverley Novels, tlie best he ever wrote, the books which made hiin famous. And he might never have written them if he had not been forced to walk through Disappointment Street. Do you know whsjt character in the Bible all this makes me. think of? Joseph. He had to walk along the street? Yes several times. There was the time, his brothers sold him as a slave. There was the time his master threw him into prison when he deserved nothing but praise. There was the time when the King's butler whom he had l'elped • forgot all about helping him in return. Why there was enough there to have'kept most people in Disappointment Street for the rest of their lives, don't you think? But it didn't keep Joseph. He was a brave fellow, too, and made the most v»f his position and every time he came out well. No one could have come out better than he did at the last, when lie was made, the greatest man in Egypt after Pharaoh. And his story suggests to us that no matter what happens to us., if \vc believe in God and do our best things will all come right in the end. Wicked men may do their worst? against? fSSJg and may throw us time and time again into Disappointment but if we are faithful we'll win through, and probably find. something better waiting lor us than the things' we were forced to lose.

GOD TAKES LONG VIEWS God takes long views, and will, not be discouraged By our loud crying 'Things are going wrong.' He sees, the end; we only the be. ginning, He knows the way is long. God works for ever; we but for tlie moment; His Ls the -great and boundless plan of good: His the divine, all knowing, and all loving His the true. Fatherhood. ( We gaze uppn the pattern incom-t pleted, And wonder if it ever will come right, God sees it finished in harmonic beauty And bathed in Heaven's light.