June 24, 2008: "The Lord Has Been Good To Me"

In an email recently I praised an individual for her sunny appreciation of God's blessings. She has to have a sharp eye for those blessings, because in many ways she has a difficult life. In fact, her general situation is so hard that I mentally reference her example when I quote to myself the proverb, "I cried because I had no shoes till I met a man who had no feet." She's the one without feet, and I'm just temporarily shoeless.

But while praising her peace I recalled a time when I was 17 and a friend told me how impressed he was with my mother's spiritual calm when she lost her husband. "She has such a look of the peace of the Lord on her face," he said, and I was shocked. "Oh no - you haven't seen her tears," I told him. "I see her anguish at home all the time."

I also recalled a moment when I was 14 and my mother was deeply upset over the fact that a family member had fallen into sin. Foolishly I said to her, "Mom - look at Dad! He's calm about this. He's taking it well." She told me, "No, he is not taking it well." And she explained how outraged and grieved he was, along with examples of how he expressed that in private. I hadn't known. I simply had not seen his sorrow. He had thought it wise - and certainly he was right - to hide that from his son.

We are like icebergs sometimes. I read somewhere, and suppose it's true, that only about 10 percent of an iceberg floats above the surface of the water. The rest sits heavily below where less sunlight can reach.

But it is good if that 10 percent of us that can bask in and reflect light is also the public side that people can see. This is not hypocrisy but good manners. Joseph washed tears from his face before appearing to his brothers (Genesis 43:31). Nehemiah only once gambled sorrow in the presence of Artaxerxes - otherwise his policy was never to be sad before the king (Nehemiah 2:1). While we must sometimes speak of our burdens in order to give others the privilege of bearing them, we do well to remember that they have their burdens too, and may well find their sorrows eased more by our expressions of gratitude than our cries of complaint. May God give us grace so that, like my saintly friend, our public face manifests a resolve to count our blessings more than we bemoan our curses.