I came across a lesson in life recently, as the title says "Rejoice in all things!". It takes time to examine a title or statement and make total sense of it and I am sure I am not the only one who has this trouble. This summer I have had the desire to read some classic novels that normally people read when they are young but in my case it didn't happen. When I was reading "Our Daily Bread", it made mention about the book Robinson Crusoe and I thought " I have never read that book" so I searched the Internet and found a copy there, then I saved it to my hardrive and read it later. As time went on I found copies of more novels and read them. One of the latest ones is "Polyanna", a story about an orphan girl taken in by her spinster aunt, who by the way is a grouch. Polyanna is the daughter of a missionary minister. Her father taught her the art of appreciation and thankfulness by way of what he called the glad game. They used to receive barrels full of things needed and one time Polyanna wanted a doll but got a pair of crutches. Her father told her to be glad that she did not need the crutches and life goes on from there.
When she came to her aunt's home, she got to know many people in the surrounding village and taught them the "glad" game with the purpose of teaching them to be thankfull for things that most people take for granted. She got to know an older gentleman who had hardly talked to anyone for years and always walked on the streets looking down at the ground with no interest in the world around him. On the second or third meeting with the man (Mr Pendleton), Polyanna was able to break the ice with him but not fully. Some time later as she was walking up the road to his house, she came across him laying on the ground with a broken leg, not able to get up so he asked her go to his house and phone the doctor to come and rescue him. This she did and further broke the ice with Mr. Pendleton, especially when she had the opportunity to visit with him in his sick bed at his home. Mr. Pendleton came to realize that Polyanna's cheerfull attitude was infectious as she showed interest in the colourful designs reflected on the walls from some prisms he had that were sitting in the sunlight. Things exploded from there and a close friendship developed between them to the point that this recluse changed so much he asked Polyanna if she would move into his house to be the "child presence" he needed to make his house a home. He had in the past had a relationship with a woman but it did not work out and the lady went elsewhere to join another man as husband and wife so that is why Mr Pendleton became the town hermit.
Polyanna had similar friendships with most of the people in the village and the atmosphere changed dramatically around town. Towards the end of the story, Polyanna had an accident when a car hit her causing her to lose the use of her legs. It was quite awhile after the accident that Polyanna learned the hard fact that she was supposed to be crippled for life. As you can guess, the cheerful attitude of the young lady began to change for the worse as she couldn't find anything to be glad about but there is a silver lining in every cloud as the townspeople whom Polyanna had cheered up came back to try to cheer her up with the reports of the good things that she had done for them after she taught them the glad game and Polyanna's attitude started lifting up again.
The end of the story is good as she was taken to a specialist in a far off town for treatment from which Polyanna was able to gain the use of her legs again and she now had something extremely good to be happy or glad about. As you can see there really is no need to go around in life with a great long lower lip almost dragging the ground just because things are not quite what you want them to be.
Now that the story is over, I can get to where the story fits in with my life. I have read in the Bible many times where it says to rejoice but it is not always easy to rejoice if things seem to be going against you. Since I got injured in a bad fall 14 years ago, I have had things go wrong and I didn't always have a good attitude about them. These things are financial, health, possibly relationship problems, problems with work related tasks not co-operating with me and many other things. This week I have had a bad last few days because something is not right in my physical body and my wife and I spent most of the afternoon at the emergency department of the local hospital with the doctor checking me over, doing tests and asking many question. After all of this time and frustration, we headed home around 5 PM, feeling somewhat better because the doctor has given us a better grasp of what is going on and how to deal with it. We also realize that there may not be an immediate cure to the problem but if we approach the task and have faith that God will help me to overcome the difficulty then life will be much more enjoyable but it can be enjoyable even in the meantime if I keep rejoicing in God's hand in our lives.
I hope I have not been too boring with this story but I felt that it was time to put down some words about my Revelation.God bless everyone here and everywhere who trusts in our Precious Father.
Wilf Blakey
