| The Life of Dr. J.R. Miller |
Chapter 12 |
Page 2 |
It was his delight to think of the pleasures of travel and the delights of the country for other people. But it never seemed to occur to him that these pleasures and delights were for him. It was enough for him that he could live on the memory of rambles in the field and woods in past years. Such memories enabled him once to say to vacation wanderers:
“The vacation days furnish opportunity for reading a book which is not printed in ordinary type – the book of Nature. God wrote it himself. Every leaf is a little chapter, every flower teaches its sweet lesson, every blade of grass has its touch of inspiration, and every waving tree is a whole volume in itself. Then mountains and rivers and valleys and seas are written all over the great thoughts of God. Blessed is he who learns to read what God has written in these natural things.”
He used the vacation season as an opportunity to teach young people such lessons as these:
“One should not take a vacation from being good and doing good, even while resting. There is only one record of Jesus giving or seeking to give his disciples a vacation, and his word to them was not, ‘Go ye apart, and rest awhile,’ but ‘Come ye apart, and rest.’ They were to go with him. We are not to leave Christ and Christ’s service or the Christ life, when we turn aside for a little rest. Some people seem to think that they should drop everything, even their church life, sometimes their Christian behaviour, when they go away to take a vacation. But this is not right. We must be Christians wherever we go, for we are always on duty, we always represent Christ. Wherever we stay, even for a day, we should confess Christ.”
Page 2