Constantly Behold Him

This morning, while rummaging through a workshop drawer, I happened upon a package of old postcards and letters. Prior to this year, I had almost forgotten the existence of these artefacts. Twice in the last few months, I have sat down and read the messages mailed to me by my mother during the spring of 1957. They chronicle a month long motor trip to Florida taken by my parents and another couple. The messages were mailed almost daily for a period of four weeks. The affection, encouragement, travel details and reminders to keep up with my school work contained in the letters and postcards are almost incidental to what I most remember about that very long month.

At the age of nine years, I was abruptly removed from school and the entirety of my social network and sent to live with my aunt and uncle and their two very young daughters. They treated me with great kindness and respect. I was given enough school work by my teacher to complete independently the grade three curriculum for all of the four weeks in March and April of that year. I spent each morning sitting alone at a card table completing my required lessons in mathematics, reading, social studies and writing. I learned more about research and independent study than I cared to know as a nine year old boy. The most difficult part, of course, was to simply force my young self to sit down and start to work. I spent each afternoon exploring the small City of North Bay. I must have walked hundreds of miles during that spring. I learned a great deal about being alone, independent and competent. I do remember very well visiting my older just married sister as I was allowed to explore the city streets.

To be blunt, those four weeks in the spring of 1957 are remembered as difficult and lonely. Although I was very well treated, I was forced to adapt to completely foreign circumstances for what then appeared to be a very long period of time. I have realized lately that I matured a great deal that spring and that the discipline learned over a difficult month was of great use to me as an adult. A decade later, I was to use the same skills to catch up with disastrously lapsed university studies during a post-Christmas break spent alone in a university residence. As a middle aged man, I used identical discipline and skills to independently prepare for the Ministry of Education Supervisory Officer examination. If it was possible, I would send my parents a thank you note right now, but the true author or our learning through adversity is God Himself. It is often through adversity that we learn the most. Adversity is very often the favoured teaching method of our God. In Ecclesiastes 7:14 we read.

14 In the day of prosperity be joyful, But in the day of adversity consider: Surely God has appointed the one as well as the other…(New King James Version)

The prophet Isaiah makes the point very clear in Isaiah 30:20.

20 And though the Lord gives you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, yet your Teacher will not hide Himself any more, but your eyes will constantly behold your Teacher. (Amplified Version)

Like me, if you find yourself in adversity today, look around with fresh eyes for the Teacher. Your God and your Jesus will be right there where, if you look and believe, you “can constantly behold” Him.

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