Life is yours (writes Saint Paul to the Christians of Corinth) for all are yours. A true Christian, while he has natural life, lays hold on eternal life. The former is to him a season of grace, the seed-time of eternity, and the longer he lives, the riper he becomes for Heaven. Surely this is both comfortable and instructive for us. The comfort of life is ours: As sorrowful yet always rejoicing. Let your present life be overcast with clouds, or vexed with storms of trial, yet if there is any comfort on earth, you have it; your present life may be weak and failing, but your spiritual life as a Christian, ministers comfort to your natural life as man. Observe how true this is: poverty often clouds and eclipses the comforts of life; but hath not God chosen the poor in this world to be rich in faith, and heirs of His kingdom? If one humbles the other lifts up. Reproach is sometimes an heartbreaking trial. My heart (says the Psalmist) expected reproach and misery. Yet here is a Christian's comfort: our glory is this, the testimony of our conscience. What is man's condemnation, if God acquits? Worldly losses are often very heavy: yet we read, ye took with joy the being stripped of your goods, knowing that you have a better, and a lasting substance. Thus we see that the spiritual life distils comfort into the natural. There is no heavier grief to a Christian than sin, his own sins; yet his tears are both sweeter and more profitable than the triumphs of the ungodly. A fool will laugh at sin; but as the crackling of thorns under a pot, so is the laughter of a fool. Thus you see that life is yours. In the life of a Christian at its lowest ebb, there is a spring-tide of comfort.
- text taken from Daily Bread - Bring a Few Morning Meditations for the Use of Catholic Christians by Father Richard Waldo Sibthorp