And between them we run the risk of drifting about, the “good” hiding the “best” even more effectually than it could be hidden by downright frivolity with its smothered heart-ache at its own emptiness. Never has it been so easy to live in half a dozen good harmless worlds at once-art, music, social science, games, motoring, the following of some profession, and so on. In every branch of learning and workmanship the tendency of these days is to specialize-to take up one point and follow it to the uttermost.Īnd Satan knows well the power of concentration, if a soul is likely to get under the sway of the inspiration, “this one thing I do,” he will turn all his energies to bring in side-interests that will shatter the gathering intensity.Īnd they lie all around, these interests. All these work by gathering into focus currents and waves that, dispersed, cannot serve us. We see the principle shadowed in the trend of science the telephone and the wireless in the realm of sound, the use of radium and the ultra violet rays in the realm of light. It is “all for all” by a law as unvarying as any law that governs the material universe. Gathered up, focussed lives, intent on one aim-Christ-these are the lives on which God can concentrate blessedness.
And it seemed to talk, standing there-to talk about the possibility of making the very best of these lives of ours.įor if the Sun of Righteousness has risen upon our hearts, there is an ocean of grace and love and power lying all around us, an ocean to which all earthly light is but a drop, and it is ready to transfigure us, as the sunshine transfigured the dandelion, and on the same condition-that we stand full face to God. It was just a dandelion, and half withered-but it was full face to the sun, and had caught into its heart all the glory it could hold, and was shining so radiantly that the dew that lay on it still made a perfect aureole round its head. Suddenly, from a dark corner of purple brown stems and tawny moss, there shone out a great golden star. The sun was climbing behind a steep cliff in the east, and its light was flooding nearer and nearer and then making pools among the trees. It was in a little wood in early morning.
“Focussed: A Story and a Song” by Lilias Trotter While there, she wrote the poem that later inspired the song “Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus.” Here is the original poem without anything changed to preserve the authority of this source. She had laid her life down for that one purpose. There, in the desert, Trotter knew what it was like to be stripped from every distraction to focus upon the face of Jesus. She lived among the nationals in the hiddenness of the desert there for forty years. Not deterred, she decided to still follow the call of God to Africa and go by herself. As she responded to this call, no mission agencies would send her there or support her mission.