Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace
Accept
No whining or belly-aching. Take your medicine like a man, stiff upper lip and all that stuff. Accept - period.
Hardships
What else do you do with them? I guess you can just say no. Maybe like Job you can sit down, tear your clothes, pour ashes over your head, and scrape your scabs with a potshard. I have done that figuratively on several occasions. But then I got up, washed my face, changed my clothes, dabbed my sores with some antibiotic ointment and faced and/or dealt with them head on. The alternative is to lay down and let them roll you over.
As the pathway to Peace
Had to think about that one. For those visual folks, I pictured a guy toting a small designer backpack, tripping down Peace's path, sidestepping the ugly, painful, and tragic. Finally he arrives at Peace's front door, ready to enter the blessed rest.
But that is not how my life has worked - don't know about yours. If Mr. Niebuhr lived in this day, what other words might he use. Wilderness trail, forging forward. Maybe a tunnel. Hacking your way through the stone of indifference and heartache reaching finally to the spot where you see that small glimmer of gold. Knowing it is gold only by the difference of it and the surroundings.
A spotlight in the dark of night or maybe a cool drink to a thirsting man. Is it not so much a pathway as a before and after picture. I will never fully appreciate that cool drink like that parched man, because I have never in my life been that thirsty. How can I fully appreciate that gold if I have not spent years and years, panning and tunneling through the rock and shale. The ink of total darkness allows us the thrill at seeing that shaft of white light.
Peace cannot exist without hardship. Peace is the absence of......
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