"He who spreads the most happiness and lessens the most distress within his own circle is undoubtedly the best friend to his country and the world, since nothing more is necessary than for all men to imitate his conduct, to make the greatest part of the misery of the world cease in a moment. While the ambitious passions of some, are merely to shine and be noticed, or to govern, and of some to accumulate. Let us have one great passion alone that influences our breasts, the passion which reason validates, which conscience approves, which heaven inspires, -- that of being and doing good." 

Robert Hall, photo by Steve McCurry.

 "It's true, that some men work themselves to death, but that is a small number compared to those who die from violating the laws of health; and death from excessive activity is far preferable to death from rust. The spirits may be exhausted by employment, but they are utterly destroyed by idleness. Burton, in his old book, sums up the causes of depression and reduces them to two, solitariness and idleness. Now when Charles Lamb was set free from the desk job which he was chained to for years, was in ecstasy and joy. He said, "I would not go back to my prison for ten years longer, for a million dollars. I am free! free as air! I will live another fifty years! Positively the best thing a man can do is nothing!"

Two weary years passed, and Lamb's feelings had undergone a complete change. He found that leisure, though a pleasant garment to look at, is a very bad one to wear. He found that his humdrum task the seemingly dreary drudgery of desk-work, was a blessing in disguise. He wrote his friend and said, "I assure you having no work is worse than overwork; the mind preys on itself, the most unwholesome of food. I have ceased to care for almost anything." How many like him, cursed with too much leisure, take too much of something else to make their gloom deeper and their misfortunes more! Colton observes that boredom has made more gamblers than greed, more drunkards than thirst, and more suicides than despair." William Matthews.

  As we enter this season of joy and celebration, giving and receiving of gifts, good will towards man is at its highest, we must not forget that Jesus, in whose name we celebrate, found His life less than all joy. The Bible says -

"Mary will bear a Son; and you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins.”

What does that mean? What are those sins?

They include our sins against God and our sins against man. Jesus suffered the very sins of man that He came to forgive. Now the story of Christ is a story of sorrow, rejection, and loss.

Like many today, Jesus suffered emotional and physical abuse: here are a list of the emotional struggles and abuses He suffered ---

Emotional 

Jesus had no stately form or majesty that we should look upon Him,

He had no appearance that we should be attracted to Him.

He was despised and forsaken of men,

A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; people hid their faces from him; he was despised, and they considered him insignificant.

He was hated without cause;

Rejected by his own culture, the very people He came to help;

His own family abandoned Him,

He was lied to and about,

His close friend, Judah, betrayed him, and even that with a kiss, 

He was threatened,

Laughed at and spit upon,

Stripped naked in public,

Mocked in His life and in His death, and still today.

Physical abuse -

His beard was pulled out,

 Is. 52:14 "It is true that many were shocked when they saw him. He was beaten so badly that he no longer looked like a man."

They struck him on the head with a stick

Crown of thorns.

His back was beaten until it was laid open,

Drove nails through his hands and feet

Stabbed him with a sword

Hung him on the cross to suffer the agony of death.

In spite of all this, he forgave and offered pardon for all who believe.

Truly Jesus was a man of sorrows and acquainted with the very grief's we sometimes bear in this world. May we make every effort to follow Him in His forgiveness and mercy.

  In this piece on marriage, Robert Louis Stevenson discusses the realities of people, their weaknesses as well as their strengths. He contrasts two types of persons, one he calls Hope, the idealist that looks forward to a marriage of bliss, and the other Faith, who sees the big picture and understands that battles must be fought, and even if some battles are lost, they are, none the less, a natural part of family life.

"Hope looks for unqualified success; but Faith counts certainly on failure, and taken honorable defeat to be a form of victory..... In the first, Hope, he expects an angel for a wife; in the last, Faith, he knows that she is like himself --- erring, thoughtless, and untrue; but like himself also, filled with a struggling irradiancy of better things, and adorned with qualities, as ineffective as they are.

Now, you may safely go to school with hope; but, before you marry, you should have learned the mingled lesson of the world: that dolls are stuffed with sawdust, and yet are excellent playthings; that hope and love address themselves to a perfection, though never realized, and yet, firmly held, will become the salt and staff of life; that you yourself are compacted with infirmities, perfect, you might say, in imperfections, and yet you have a something in you lovable and worth preserving; and that, while the mass of mankind lies under the scurvy condemnation, you will scarce find one but, by some generous reading, who will become to you a lesson, a model, and a noble spouse through life.

So with this in mind, you will constantly support your own unworthiness, and easily forgive the failings of your friend. Nay, you will be wisely glad that you retain the sense of blemishes; for the faults of married people continually spur up each of them, hour by hour, to do better and to meet and love upon a higher ground. And ever, between the failures, there will come glimpses of kind virtues to encourage and console." R.L. Stevenson.

  "The cross has become for ages the symbol of grief divinely borne; has it not, generation after generation, been hid in the bosoms of thousands, sustaining the soul of self-denial, and reminding them not to faint beneath the cross of life? Has it not met the eye of many a lonely captive, and allowed him to forget his chains, and from its meek image spread through his dungeon the holiest light? Has it not kept watch with the mother by night, as she bent over her sick child, and been to her soul as a star amid the infinite darkness of her sorrow? Pressed to the lips of the living, and softly laid upon the breast of the dying, it has warmed the love of the Christian while he stays, and given him trust when 'tis time to go."

Martineau.