Let us in all the troubles of life remember that our one lack is life - that what we need is more LIFE - more of the life-making presence in us making us more, and more largely, alive. When most oppressed, when most weary of "life", as our unbelief would phrase it, let us remember that it is, in truth, the inroad and presence of death we are weary of. When most inclined to sleep, let us rouse ourselves to LIVE.
Of all things, let us avoid the false refuge of weary collapse, a hopeless yielding to things as they are. It is life in us that is discontented. We need more of what is discontented, not more of the cause of discontentment. Discontentment, I repeat, is the life in us that has not enough of itself, is not enough to itself, so calls for more. He has the victory who, in the midst of pain and weakness, cries out, not for death, not for the repose of forgetfulness ... but for strength to fight, for more power, for more consciousness of being, more God in him.
The true man trusts in a strength which is not his, which he does not feel, does not even always desire. He believes in a power that seems far from him, that is yet at the root of his fatigue itself and his need of rest - rest as far from death as is labor.
To trust in the strength of God in our weakness; to say, "I am weak; so let me be. God is strong"; to seek from him who is our life, as the natural, simple cure of all that is amiss with us ... power to do and be and live, even when we are weary - this is the victory that overcomes the world.
To believe in God our strength in the face of all seeming denial; to believe in him out of the heart of weakness and unbelief, in spite of numbness and weariness and lethargy; to believe in the wide-awake reality of his being, through all the stupefying, enervating, distorting dream; to will to wake, when the very being seems athirst for a godless repose - these are the broken steps up to the high fields where repose is but a form of strength, strength but a form of joy, joy but a from of love.
"I am weak," says the true soul, "but not so weak that I would not be strong, not so sleepy that I would not see the sun rise, not so lame but that I would walk! Thanks be to him who perfects strength in weakness and gives to his beloved of his very life even while they sleep!"
What Life Might Be!
If we will but let our God and Father work his will with us, there can be no limit to his enlargement of our existence, to the flood of life with which he will overflow our consciousness. We have no conception of what life might be, of how vast the consciousness of which we could be capable.
If every sunlit, sail-crowded sea under blue heaven flecked with wind-chased white - filled your soul, as with a new gift of life ... think what sense of existence must be yours if he, (whose thought has but fringed its garment with the gladness of such a show), were to make his abode with you ... and while thinking of the gladness of God inside your being, let you know and feel that he is carrying you as a Father in his bosom!
'Discovering the Character of God' by George MacDonald
Jesus said "I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.' (John 10:10)
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