Chapter IX: Nellie's Hindrance

NELLIE had come out from home with rather a heavy heart. Her basket full of fresh eggs for the Vicarage had been taken safely there, and now she was returning. The twilight was deepening, and she stood still to hear a thrush's good-night song.

Yesterday a Missioner had come to their village, and Nellie had gone to the service, and she had been dissatisfied with herself ever since.

The subject had been hindrances to prayer, and as Nellie stood beneath the trees breathing in the soft spring air, she recalled almost every word the Missioner had said.

She felt they spoke home, and her face was very downcast as she remembered them.

"Where do you think your hindrances to prayer come?" he had asked. "I will tell you; it is not in your outside life, among your acquaintances, in the shop or the club, the market, the school, or the pleasure party! You can have a smiling face there, and people say how nice you are and how pleasant! But the real man, and the real woman, and the real boy and girl are not seen in those places."

"It is at home, by your fireside, in the family life that we are ourselves, and it is there the great temptation comes to us to have our prayers hindered by unworthy conduct."

Nellie remembered it all, and she remembered, too, that her conduct to-day had somehow "hindered her prayers."

Her mother had asked her to do several things in the morning that she thought most unnecessary. She felt sure that no other mother would have wanted such a thing on a Monday morning!

She was a dutiful girl, and she did not refuse to do them, but she did them with an inward groan, which made them twice as hard to do.

Then the children had seemed tiresome, and one of them had torn his clothes against some barbed wire; the clothes had to be mended before he could go back to school in the afternoon. And while she was mending them at the top of her speed, he would keep on jumping in and out of bed, where he was waiting, and hindered her more than she could say.

At last the mending was done, and the children raced off to school a little late.

"Mother might have let him wear his best for once!" she grumbled to herself.

And so all the afternoon she felt things were harder than she could bear.

But now, as she came under the quiet shade of the trees and tried to think, she sat down on a grassy bank and buried her face in her hands.

What was "hindering" her prayers, and her communion with God?

The Missioner said that the word "hindered" meant "that you cut yourselves adrift" from prayer.

He said that the mainland is like communication with God; and that if a person rowed out to a rock, and, after mooring his boat to return, cut it adrift, he would sever himself from returning to the mainland!

So if we went out on to the sea of our daily life, and let pleasure or worry, work or care, cut us adrift from communication with God, all our happiness and peace would go!

Yes, Nellie remembered every word, and sorrowfully she thought, "What is separating me from communion with God?"

At first she was not sure, but after a few moments of thinking it over, she confessed to herself that it was not "pleasure," for she thought she did not get much of that; it was not "work," though she had heaps of that; it was not "care," for as yet she felt but little of that; it was—she paused—she hated to acknowledge it to herself—it was worry! She had got into a kind of vexation with her life, and all that belonged to it. She could not alter it; the more she tried the worse it seemed to be. What was she to do?

She did love God; she did wish to please Jesus all the day, more than anything else in the world; and yet here she was vexed and irritated by the unalterable things in her lot, which (she told herself) her mother could alter, but did not, and which galled and fretted her almost past endurance.

Was there any remedy, or must she go home just as burdened as she came out?

The thrush still sang, though the dusk was falling now upon tree and meadow.

Nellie felt she must go, but how could she till she had found rest?

Ah! With a start of joy, she raised her head. Rest? Then the words of her Saviour flashed upon her, "Come unto ME all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn of ME."

Nellie saw it now, and the struggle was ended. She had been wanting her own will and her own way; she had been wanting to set the crooked things straight herself, but it was only God who could do it for her, after all.

The Missioner had said the yoke of Christ, under which he walked so patiently, was the Will of God. Was that the solution of all her home frets and worries? The Will of God! Yes, she would take it. She would do as Christ said, "Take the yoke upon her," and so find rest!

Such a peace stole over her that she could have cried her heart out; but she knew she would be missed; and with an inward thanksgiving too deep for words, she ran along the dark lane, and soon entered the lighted cottage.

She kissed her mother silently, and hastened upstairs, saying only, "I sha'n't be a minute," and when she came down, they wondered at her brightness, but did not know that in finding rest of heart in Jesus, her life had been "transfigured."