He had to learn the lesson just
as we do by J. R. Miller. I have learned to
be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need,
and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret
of being content in any and every situation, whether well-fed or
hungry, whether living in plenty or in need." Philippians 4, 11
and 12. Life is a school. All its experiences
are lessons. We are all in Christ's school,
and He is always educating us. Disciples are learners, and all
true Christians are disciples. We enter the lowest grade when
we begin to be Christians. We have everything to learn.
Each new experience is a new lesson set for us by the Great
Teacher. The business of noble Christian
living is learning. We know nothing when we begin.
Learning is not confined to what we get from reading books. All
of life is a school. Christ's books are ever being
put into our hands and lessons are set for us continually. Paul
tells us of one of the lessons he had learned in the school
of experience. I have learned, he said, the
secret of being content in any and every situation. We are glad
to know that Paul had to learn to be contented. We are apt to
think that such a man as he was did not have to learn to live,
as we common people do, that he always knew, for instance,
how to be contented. Here, however, we have the confession
that he had to learn the lesson just as we do. He did not always
know the secret of contentment. He was well on in years when
he said this, from which we conclude that it took him a long time
to learn the lesson, and that it was not easy for him to do
it. Christ's school is not easy. Sorrow is a choice lesson in
Christ's school. Sorrow is not an accident breaking
into our life without meaning or purpose. God could prevent
the coming of the sorrow if He so desired. He has all power,
and nothing can touch the life of any of His children unless
He is willing. Since we know that God loves
us and yet permits us to suffer, we may be quite sure that there
is a blessing, something good, in whatever it is that brings
us pain or sorrow. We shrink from pain. We would
run away from afflictions. We would have refused to accept
sorrow. But there are things worth suffering
for, things dearer than ease and pleasure. We learn lessons
in pain, which repay a thousand times the cost of our tears. The Bible tells us that God preserves
the tears of His children, putting them in His tear bottle. Tears
are sacred to God because of the blessings that come through
them to His children. In heaven, we will look back
on our lives of pain and sorrow on the earth and will find that
our best lessons have come through our tears. All the Christian
graces have to be learned in Christ's school. There Paul had
learned contentment. He never would have learned it,
however, if he had had only pleasure and ease all his life. Contentment
comes from learning to do without things which we once supposed
to be essential to our comfort. Paul had learned contentment
through finding such fullness of blessing in Christ that he
did not need the secondary things any more. Perhaps we would succeed
better in learning this same grace if we had fewer of life's
comforts, if sometimes we had experience of need. The continuity
of blessings that flow like a river into our lives gives us no opportunity
to learn contentment. When sufferings come into our
life, disagreeable things instead of pleasant things, hunger and
poverty instead of plenty, rough ways instead of flower-strewn
paths, God is teaching us the lesson of contentment, so that
we can say at length that we have learnt the secret of being
content.