Gold Nugget 248 - Miserable as a Lark
We are all partly subject to our surroundings; but some natures happen to be in circumstances which appear to be quite alien to the development of what is in them. They are repressed; the strong forces of their life refuse to come forth; they are comparative nonentities; if no change occurs in their relative position they will pass away from life unknown and almost useless.
There are in some persons mental faculties which, being predominant, but not drawn out by appropriate nutriment and exercise, give the individual an appearance of stupidity and vacuity. A poet’s soul encompassed by everything antagonistic to its development will be miserable as a lark that cannot rise. But when the unnatural restraints are removed, and the dispositions and faculties of individuals are placed amidst circumstances favourable to their proper development, there comes a change as rapid, as fresh, and striking as when the light and rain of spring call forth the bulb from under the dull earth into a form of beauty and sweetness. …
The reality of the transformation is seen in the new aims, the new joys, the new acts of the soul, the new outward form of life, the new spiritual discernment of the spiritual and unseen, the new hidden secret which no words can reveal, the new absorption in Christ. … How unlike our former selves will that perfectly holy, tearless, strong, joyous, unwearied life, exercised in a “spiritual body,” created in special adaptation for the new activities and joys of the kingdom of heaven.
The Pulpit Commentary, I Samuel p.179-180, I Samuel 10: 1-8, (C. Chapman)
Gold Nugget 248
Miserable as a Lark
