Our Lot in Life

How many of us are like Ephraim and Manasseh of old. When God allocated their lot in the newly-conquered land of Canaan, through Joshua, they complained. As my dear sainted mother used to say, “You couldn’t satisfy some people if you hung them with a new rope.”

We murmur because we feel others have a better life than we. I would remind all such what Jesus said to Peter, “What is that to thee? follow thou me.”  As Thomas à Kempis says in his book, The Imitation of Christ, “For man proposes, but God disposes.” Shakespeare, too, had a similar message in Hamlet: "There is a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will."

Paul’s lot in life was to suffer for the Lord Jesus; God told him that at his conversion. Nevertheless, he rejoiced and wanted nothing but the best for others. He wrote to the Corinthians, “Now ye are full, now ye are rich, ye have reigned as kings without us: and I would to God ye did reign, that we also might reign with you.”

And what did old John the Beloved, who was very familiar with loneliness and pain, say to the saints of his day? “Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth.” Although it may not be true of some of our own lots in life, we should want nothing but the best for our dear brethren.

Whatever my lot,

Thou has taught me to say,

It is well, it is well,

with my soul.