Ecclesiastes 11

Ecclesiastes 11:3

THE OF SHADOWS TO SHOWERSEcc_11:3.THIS is the season of dark clouds and heavy rainfall, a time appropriate to the treatment of this text. When the clouds gather, children and nervous tempered people sometimes say, “A storm is coming; we fear it will be a cyclone, and sweep us to death.”But when the clouds open, they break into refreshing showers only, and result in reviving vegetation, enlivening all nature, and leaving the very air more fresh and sweet.The text intends to show that it is so of the storms of life, to teach us that the blackest clouds to come, causing timorous ones to cower and cry out for fear, are not often enemies intended for our hurt, but blessings in black disguise, for “if the clouds be full of rain, they empty themselves upon the earth”.There is a wonderfully wide application to this truth. LIFE HAS ITS DARK DAYS“True love never runs smoothly,” so the old adage says, and there is something in this speech. The severest quarrels that courting-couples ever have, come to those who love best. They feel so deeply that darker clouds can come to them than to flirts or hypocritical pretenders; but while it is so that true love never runs smoothly, it is also a fact that no storm of anger is likely to do more for mutually devoted people than bind them by stronger bonds. They may scrap and separate, but the cloud of misunderstanding that threatens to-day will break tomorrow and provide each with tears and apologies and increased affection.

Why this making up of lovers is so refreshing that some people are tempted to fall out for the simple privilege of putting things to right in the next meeting. Paul said, “Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? God forbid”!But we have this to say, don’t look on that dark day in your domestic affairs as the end of all lover’s or marital bliss! If the cloud is a great one and black, and threatening, so much the more reason for compelling it to send you showers. The thunder storm may distress us and make us afraid, but if we are wise enough to set the barrels under the eaves, our washing will be easy for a month afterward.My sweetheart and I do not always agree, nor live always in the sunshine of love; but I am glad to testify to newly married, and those yet to be, that in forty years no cloud has come so dark or ominous that we could not get out of it showers that sent the roots of love deeper, and made her fruits the more sacred and sweet. Don’t be discouraged by the dark day. “Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another”, and love will live again. “The kindest and the happiest pair Will find occasion to forbear;And something every’day they live To pity and perhaps forgive.”SOCIAL LIFE ALSO HAS ITS DARK SEASONSThe most of us have at some time or other come under social clouds that obscured the sun and blackened the whole horizon. Perhaps poverty has put us there; possibly conscience has played her part, and it may be that our own missteps, or false statements of enemies have effected such fear.I shall never forget how, as a youth of nineteen, with all the social instincts and ambitions of that age, there were dark clouds seen on every side. My first year at college came near being the crucifixion of all my hopes. I learned that year how little the rustic knew and how poorly country breeding prepared one for happiness among those of better social advantages. My commoner clothes were a daily crucifixion and my English, evilly affected by the tongue of the colored people who abounded about the Kentucky home, brought me many a blush and tended to discouragement. But I thank God, now, for every shadow of youth.

I see in connection with it a refreshing shower, and I can say, without boasting, that life is sweeter to me, and all social joys seem the more privileges because of the shadows that then obscured the horizon.There was another period also, when, because of religious convictions that separated me from the old associates, the social sky blackened. It is often so, that to accept Jesus as Saviour, entering actively upon His service, is to be ostracized by that circle of companions who, though gay and godless, are still attractive.It was a dark day for A.

J. Diaz, when, in Cuba, he confessed Christ as his Lord and denounced Catholicism. It was a black hour when my early teacher, Rabbi Salin, saw that Jesus Christ was his Messiah and accepted Him as such. His friends cut his acquaintance. His relatives anathematized his name, and even his father, mother, brother and sisters scoffed at his faith and scorned his proffered love. It looked then to that young preacher as if only storm and darkness came to Christians, but “if the clouds be full of rain, they empty themselves upon the earth”, and where the shadows lie deepest, the rarest blossoms will burst into beauty.

Diaz came to move in a wider and better circle than his boyhood ever knew. The black clouds that separated him from his own loved ones, swept by, and in the light that followed their going he found his own mother and other members of his house redeemed, and Rabbi Salin long sleeps with the dead, but when he was buried a whole southern state mourned.No man ever did the right without encountering cloudy opposition, and no man ever encountered opposition to do the right without learning new lessons in Divine love, and coming into a larger and more sacred social realm.IN LIFE THERE ARE BLACK DAYSI need not emphasize that assertion.

The times upon which we have fallen have given it sufficient emphasis. Very many get between the upper and nether millstone of slow trade and money stringency.The horizon of business life is overspread with black clouds just now, and men cannot see beyond them, or around them; it is one of the greatest trials that ever comes to a man. Henry Ward Beecher declared that no man that has not experienced failure in business can possibly imagine the suffering incident to passing from financial success to bankruptcy. It is truly a trial of trials. It takes the very heart out of one, discouraging his spirit and distempering his views. But then also often, the blackest cloud gives the greatest promise of refreshing rain. “A man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth”, but what he is, instead.

Job endured as in the pit. His oxen and camels and children were taken away; his wife was smitten and he himself did not escape, but Job came out of the process, refined as by fire, sweeter for the shadows that had gathered about him, as the storm seems to gather about one in a black night.It is a question whether a man has the experiences that fit him for the purest life until he has seen hard times, felt strong rubs, suffered all the apprehensions and depressions of failure.Years ago, according to the Boston Traveller, a half dozen business men of that city were talking together concerning the essentials to success.

Upon many points they differed, but upon one they were in perfect agreement, namely, that twenty years of poverty and struggle in early life were the sinequanon of business success. All the speakers were millionaires of national repute; self-made men of mercantile sagacity, and they spake wisely.It may be dark. Distressing things may occur.We may fill up the days with sighs and fears, and spend the nights dreaming of disaster, but if we are God’s, He will take care of His own. The clouds that gather about us will empty themselves and refresh us. We will learn with the Apostle Paul “how to abound” and how to “suffer need”, and having suffered, we will have sympathy for them that suffer. Out of our need, economy will come, and out of our need, prayer and a sense of dependence upon God.

The very man and woman who has these things is rich, “for a man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth”, but in his fidelity to himself, his faithfulness toward his fellows, and his affection for God.I have read somewhere of a parable from a gardener, who had wrought assiduously to keep the weeds from: his garden, but walking there he saw a fat one flourishing. He was ready to cut it up with his hoe when he noticed a fine bean stalk already beginning to twine about it, and convert this solitary stalwart enemy into a friend of good support, a strong staff on which to climb into the sunshine.

The gardener said, “Go on my wise one; turn your enemy into an instrument of advantage and the higher and stronger he becomes the surer your support, and the sweeter the sunshine into which you can push yourself.”And so, beloved, use the noxious weeds of business depression and distress; instead of sitting under their shadows to mope and die, climb by their very branches into that upper and better world of sympathy, economy, faith and love; defy the black clouds by remembering that when they burst, you must be blessed in the refreshing showers.THERE ARE TRYING TIMES IN LIFEThe disciples of Jesus Christ knew such times often and in severest measure, and the true disciple of Jesus Christ is likely to fall upon the same dark days—days of heavy cloud and threatening storm. But what of it?We pray best under pressure. The times when I have been nearest God have been those seasons when much seemed against me. When all is prosperous, our prayers are put up indifferently and possibly even forgotten all together, but when the dark clouds gather and the storm threatens and the season of distress is on, and danger is nigh, then we pray whether we ever prayed before or not. Even the unbeliever, in times of adversity, presents the spectacle that Paul did to the people who had known him as persecutor—when first they saw him upon his knees, they said, “Behold, he prayeth”!Dr. Talmage tells of a ship captain who put out with his vessel loaded with a number of passengers from Buffalo, thinking to cross Lake Erie very early in the season.

The ice was still afloat, and when they had gone far out into the lake, the captain looked and saw the ice was closing in on him on all sides. He saw no way out but destruction and death before him.

He called unto the cabin passengers and all the crew that could be spared from their posts, and told them that the ship must be lost unless God interposed, and although he was not a Christian, he said, “Let us pray,” and they all knelt asking God to come to their deliverance. Then he went back on deck, and the man at the wheel shouted, “All right, captain, it is blowing northwest now.”While the prayer was going up in the cabin, the wind changed and blew the ice out of the way. The mate asked, “Shall I put on more sail, captain?” “No,” responded! the captain, “don’t touch her. Someone else is managing this ship.”Ah, beloved, when the winds are fair and the skies are clear, we handle the helm, but when there are icy troubles and misfortunes on every side, when we find ourselves shut in and endangered, then it is that we turn our affairs over to God and find that He is conducting the immortal craft of our life.We trust most in time of trouble. Christ proves Himself a present help in time of trouble. So long as Peter was walking on the waves he said nothing of his dependence, but when he began to sink, he cried, “Lord, save me”.

When Paul was on the tempest-tossed ship that for fourteen days had not seen the sun, his fellow-passengers lost heart and believed the end at hand, but Paul saw in that storm an additional reason for putting his faith in God, and in consequence an angel came to say, “Fear not, Paul; thou must be brought before Caesar”. Somebody said, “One of the chief purposes of trials and afflictions is to make us send for our Saviour.” If the famine had not reached the land of Canaan, the sons of Jacob never would have reached their brother Joseph.

Blessed is the trial that impels us to go to our Elder Brother for aid, and teaches us trust.We attempt more when we are tried. We are even equal to most in times of trial. Truly the darkest days of religious life, of pastoral service, have always been the hours before the dawn, and I have learned not to fear the cloud that is not bigger than a man’s hand, nor to feel that with every clap of thunder there is sure to be a cyclone, with every crisis, a crash.Suppose in church life the pastor does come upon times of criticism, what of it? It is his to work ahead, looking to God only for reward. Supposing our efforts to provide for the support of the church are not wholly successful today. Is that any argument it shall not be accomplished tomorrow?

Nay, verily, unless we be discouraged! Cowardice and discouragement have little place in the Church of God.

Cheerfulness and confidence are the beloved children of the Christian spirit, and whatever trials may come, whatever opposition may arise, whatever storms may gather, it is mine and yours, if you be His, to struggle upward and on, knowing that he who serves God will succeed in the end.I have been in the ministry for forty-seven years, and in all that time I have sought not to sound a discouraging note with reference to the work of Christ’s Church. If a spiritual drought is on, it is mine to pray for the clouds that bring the rain.If dissension arises, it is mine to cast in lots with that company who seek to serve God rather than condemn the people that carry the heavy loads; if there is a shortage in the treasury, it is mine to put a subscription against that shortage instead of flaunting it as evidence of faithlessness on the part of the faithful; if the meetings are not full, it is mine to remember that if present, I can make one more. In other words, it is mine to honor Christ by a cheerful, courageous and serviceable spirit, and say of the clouds, that may come in consequence, if they “be full of rain, they empty themselves upon the earth”.We are told that at the assault on Fort Hudson, Color-sergeant Kerney was the first to mount the parapet. As he reached the summit of the fort he was terribly wounded by a shot which shattered his knee and thigh. As he fell, he grasped the flag, and resting the staff against his body he kept the flag afloat until the assault was repulsed. Then he crawled off the field on one hand and foot, still holding the colors in the air.

As he entered the hospital, where the wounded were being cared for, they all cheered him. In response the sergeant answered, “Boys, the old flag never touched the ground.” That is the spirit of the true soldier, and that is the spirit which Jesus Christ expects of you and me.

Whatever comes, let us not let the colors of our God and our Christ trail in the dust.