THUNDER OR ANGEL'S VOICE by J.R. Miller Then a voice came from
heaven, I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again. The crowd, standing there, heard
it, and said it was thunder. Others said, An angel has spoken
to him. John 12 verses 28 and 29 Different people continually
give a different answer to the same question. Our eyes are alike,
and yet no two people see the same picture on the canvas. Our ears are constructed on the
same pattern, and yet no two hear the same song as they listen
side by side to the singer. The world is not the same to
any two people. We carry within us a mysterious
power which interprets to us whatever we see or hear of the
sights and voices of the outside world, and this power is distinct
in each one. Thus it happens continually that
the same voice falls upon the ears of two different people
and is altogether different to the two. Each hears what his
own soul is prepared for hearing. We have an illustration of this
in the story of Christ. One day a voice was heard in
the temple. It was a divine voice, speaking
from heaven. The people standing about the
Master heard it, and were strangely impressed by it. Yet they were
not all impressed in the same way. Some thought it thundered. The voice awed and terrified
them. Others thought an angel had spoken. It was the same sound. The difference
was in those who heard it. The state of their heart gave
tone to the voice. It is always so. Our own heart
makes our world for us, and fills and populates it, and the music
we hear is modulated as it passes over the chords of our own soul. If you hold a seashell to your
ear, You hear a strange murmuring sound, which, we used to be told
in childhood, was a sort of reminiscence of the ocean's roar. The thought
is that the shell, having lain long amid the waves, the music
of the sea was hidden in its magic chambers, and that this
is what you hear when you hold the shell to your ear. This pretty
thought is dispelled, however, when you learn that instead of
the music of the ocean, the sound you hear is caused by the beating
of your own heart, the throbbing of the blood in your fingers.
Lay the shell on a table, and put your ear to it, and there
is no music. You hear the murmur only when
you hold the shell in your hands. Many of the sounds which we hear,
attributing them to various sources, are but the noise of our own
pulses, and every sound that breaks upon our ear is modified
at least by the mood or quality of our own inner life. When our
heart is glad, the world is full of song. When our heart is sad,
the world is full of tears. In ourselves the sunshine dwells,
In ourselves the music swells, Everywhere the light and shade
By the gazer's eye is made. What men and women find in the
life Depends on what they are themselves, We hear some people
talk of the coldness of the world. They find no love anywhere, no
gratitude, no appreciation, no sympathy, no tenderness. Others, living in like circumstances
and conditions, find only brightness, beauty, gladness, and tenderness,
wherever they go. The same skies are dull and dreary
to one, and glorious with their deep wonderful blue to another. The same fields are dreary and
desolate to one eye, and filled with splendid beauty to another. The same people seem unsympathetic,
uncongenial, unneighborly to one, and to the other appear
cordial, kindly, responsive, and unselfish. Each person's
heart casts its own hue and tinge upon all other lives. Two people
listen to the same voice, and while one hears what seems to
him to be terrifying thunder, the other hears the entrancing
strains of angels' songs. Two men looked out from their
prison bars. One saw the mud, the other saw
the stars. This same difference is seen
in the way life's experiences appear to different people. To
one pessimistic class everything seems discouraging. They see
only the troubles, the difficulties, the hindrances, the disheartenments. They talk always in sad tone
of their burdens, tasks, duties, disappointments, and trials. There is no blue sky in their
picture, and no stars shine down upon them. Then there are others
who always look upon life optimistically. They are never discouraged. They
are not disturbed by the perplexing things which they meet. They
expect to have struggles, since with only easy life there can
be no progress, no victories, no struggling upward, and they
grow only the braver and more resolute in battle. They meet
obstacles and hindrances, but they are not disheartened by
them, and turn them into stepping-stones for upward striving. They suffer
defeats and reverses, but they are not dismayed, only learning
from their failures how to keep from being defeated again. Everywhere
they go, they hear music, and everywhere they find something
beautiful and good. All will admit that the man with
the optimistic spirit gets far more out of life, and makes far
more of life, than his pessimistic neighbor. It is a great deal
better to see blue sky and stars, than only dull, dreary clouds. It is a more noble thing to hear
angel music that thunders in the voices that break on our
ears. Happiness or unhappiness is,
therefore, not so much a matter of external conditions as of
heart-gratitude. We gather in life what our habit
of heart has fitted us for gathering. The starling, when it finds itself
imprisoned in a cage, begins to struggle, trying to escape,
flying wildly against the wires, but it only bruises its breast
and wings in its unavailing efforts. The canary, when caged, cheerfully
accepts the inevitable, and fills all the place with sweet songs. The canary is wiser than the
starling. It is both good philosophy and
good religion to make the best of one's condition. There is
something sacred about that which is inevitable. When we find ourselves
in hard or painful conditions which are clearly providential,
over which we have no power, we must conclude that, for the
time, these conditions represent the will of God for us. This
should help us to accept them, not sullenly, but joyously. Instead of the voice of thunder
in them, we should hear angels' songs. It is not enough, however,
merely to state the law, that our own heart gives the quality
to the music that breaks on our ears. The fact that one has a
melancholy temperament which sees everything hopelessly in
shadow, is not to be regarded as a final, unchangeable fact. We are not to say an excuse for
our gloomy way of looking at things that we were made thus,
and cannot remake ourselves. In the first place, we are not
made thus, but, following a trend of tendency in our nature, we
have fallen into the miserable habit of weakly yielding to discouragement. Then, even if we had been made
thus, with melancholy temperament, that would be no reason for our
continuing unto the end of life in this unhappy state. Our business
is to grow into the likeness of Christ. And he never let himself
become subject to melancholy moods. He always found the beautiful
thing. He always heard the songs of
angels, or the voice of God, even when others heard only the
sound of thunder. He saw the flowers, where others
saw only the thorns. He saw the stars, where those
about him saw only muddy roads. He found hope, where others found
only despair. We should seek to be like Christ
in his wonderful optimism. If we find ourselves turning
every sight and sound of earth into sadness, we should take
ourselves resolutely in hand. We are living wastefully, sinfully,
while we succumb to such melancholy moods. And we should set ourselves
to work to change the miserable trend and habit into something
more beautiful and wholesome. Part of the work of Christ in
us is to transform us into songful, cheerful, rejoicing Christians,
Paul learned during his long life, in whatever state he was,
therein to be content. He carried this secret in his
own heart, so that he was not dependent on this world's weather
for the temperature of his inner life. Always keep sweet, and
go on singing, is a good motto. Easy, do you say? Only a lesson
for children? Do you think so? Did you ever
try to live it out for a week? even for a day? The perfection
of Christian living is included in this motto. He who has learned
to live by this rule has reached a high attainment. Yet it is
thus we are to seek to live continually. We should overcome our morbidity,
our unwholesomeness of temperament, and should train ourselves to
see beauty in all things, and good in every experience. In
order to do this, we must have the beauty and love of Christ
in ourselves. You must have the bird in your
heart before you can find the bird in the bush. So we must
have bird-songs in our soul or we cannot hear bird-songs in
the groves. Mr. Burroughs tells of a woman
who asked a bird-lover where she could hear the bluebird.
"'What, never heard the bluebird?' said he. Then you never will
hear it." He could have taken her in a few minutes, where a
bluebird's song or warble would fall upon her ears to hear it,
but her ears were not sensitized by love for birds. It requires
a special organ, as it were, a power either given in creation,
or acquired by long training, to hear the voices of nature. So it is with other things. An
earthly mind cannot hear heavenly voices. An unspiritual person
finds no beauty in the Bible. Spiritual things can be only
spiritually discerned. We must have the peace of God
in our bosom, and then, and then only, we shall find the peace
of God in all things, even in life's wildest storms. We must have the joy of Christ
within us, and then, and only then, all earth's noises, even
its roaring thunder, will make music of angel voices in our
ears. We cannot change the world, taking
out all its thorns, making its tasks easy and its burdens light,
modulating all its discords into harmonies, transforming its ugliness
into beauty, but we can have our own hearts renewed by the
grace of God, and thus the world will be made over for us. A new heart makes all things
new. A heart of love will find love
everywhere. A soul full of song will find
sweet music everywhere.