Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadQuiet Talks by Samuel Dickey: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks on Home Ideals: 62. A Rare Experience.
TOPIC: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks on Home Ideals (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 62. A Rare Experience.
Other Subjects in this Topic:
A Rare Experience.
It was our rare privilege at one time to have intrusted to our care for some weeks a sick babe. The wee morsel of humanity coming so completely in our life brought sweet influences that affected us greatly, and will continue to for all time. We shall always count that experience one of the blessings to give devout thanks for, and one of the trainings whose power upon us has been beyond calculation. It is enshrined as one of the hallowed times.
Yet it cost us much. For one of us it meant sleepless nights, practically sleepless, while the babe was being watched and prayerfully studied, until the coveted habit of sleep, which the little fellow needed so sorely, began to be well fixed. And after that it meant always broken sleep that his needs might be attended to. It meant unremitting, thoughtful care and devotion every waking hour of the twenty-four, and the keenest thinking at command.
For that little while our life was poured out into the babe in countless ways. The new life and vigour that quickly came to him was really our life given to him. He drew out the tenderest love, and proved to be a worthy subject for the best powers of observation and study we could rally. And without doubt he brought to us unwittingly a new keenness of observation and of thinking.
Daily he made us feel that the babe is worthy of the best brain power of the best equipped and trained man and woman. What finesse and diplomacy and patience and tireless giving out of strength he did take! We gave much and we felt the giving, too. But we received far more than we gave. We felt that, too, blessedly felt it, and have been feeling it ever since.
Every mother, who is a mother in heart as well as in name, knows the old story. And every father should know a great deal of it, though he never knows quite as much as the mother. But the more he knows of it the better a father will he be, the stronger and manlier a man, the keener and more thoughtful and gentler in all his contacts. Every duty done, whether as business man, or citizen, or in social life, will bear the impress of the larger, finer man grown within him by such experience.