Causes That Can Be Counted On…

Emerson gave us this sentence to consider: “Cause and effect, means and ends, seed and fruit, cannot be severed;” he said, “for the effect already blooms in the cause,…the fruit [is] in the seed…” When we plant a certain seed, and it grows, know what we’re going to get.

All we are and all we have and all the world around us comes from causes and consequences – from the operation of laws that can be counted on. Life and the world and the universe move along by law.

Of course, there are those who suppose that we live in a world of chance. On this subject Bruce Barton said: “When a load of bricks, dumped on a corner lot, can arrange themselves into a house; when a handful of springs and screws and wheels, emptied onto a desk, can gather themselves into a watch, then and not until then will it seem sensible, to come of us at least, to believe that all…[this] could have been created…without any directing intelligence at all.”

Being convinced that chance is not the answer—that life did not create itself, that law is over all, we must come to the conclusion that we are all part of a purposeful plan, that life is worth all the effort, all the improving, the repenting, the striving and struggling and the daily doing of duty, in short, that life is worth living – even through difficult and discouraging days.

And all this suggests that we count our many blessings and thank God for life, for loved ones, for law, and for an everlasting future – that can be counted on.