SORROWS OF LIFE

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1011, 30 June 1930, Page 14

SORROWS OF LIFE

Speaking on the subject, "The Meaning and Value of Life's Wilderness Experiences,” Mr. Urquhart. preaching at the Church of Christ, Ponsonbv Road, said the theme was naturally one fraught with deeper meaning and greater importance to those of mature years than to the verv young.

This world was not yet an altogether perfect world. If we had our fertile, well-watered, productive plains and valleys, we had also our barren wastes and wildernesses where loneliness and destruction had their habitation. If we had the bright sunshine of day, we had also the dark shadows of night. If the blue sky—the clouds also. Life itself was seldom and for very few an unbroken succession of bright summer days. If we had laughter, we also had tears. If joy, then sorrow also: and the sorrows were not without their value; a life without these sad experiences was a thing to be pitied, never to be envied; and yet in some lives the sorrows seemed to be multiplied, and out of the wilderness experiences beautiful characters were moulded.

“It is possible that tonight I am speaking to someone who is having a taste of the wilderness experiences,” said Mr. Urquhart. “Should there be such a one, I can only direct their footsteps to the Christ of the Cross. He alone is able to solve life’s problems as they should be solved. For them He can make the wilderness and the solitary places glad, and the. desert rejoice and blossom as the rose.”