2 Samuel 22:43

Jewels In The Mud

The mire of the streets. 2 Samuel 22:43.

Muck or mud from the streets! It doesn't sound as if it were of much value, does it? Except of course for the delightful business of making mud pies! But listen to what a famous writer and artist, called Ruskin, once said about it. He said that if you took an ounce or two of ordinary black slime from the footpath and had it analyzed that is, separated up into the different things of which it is composed you would find that it was made up of four things clay, sand, soot, and water.

Then, said Ruskin, suppose each of these were allowed to gather itself together and get its atoms into closest possible relation, what would happen? Well, the clay would turn into a fine white earth, which, baked in an oven, would become finest porcelain; or better still, left to itself, it would gradually grow hard and clear and able to gather out of light only the blue rays, and you would find instead of a morsel of clay a lovely blue sapphire. If the sand behaved in much the same fashion it would turn into a rainbow-hued opal. The soot, too, acting on the same principle, but trying even harder to grow hard, would become a flashing diamond. And the water would form a sparkling dew-drop, or, if crystallized, a glistening star of snow.

It sounds like “magic” to think of a sapphire, an opal, a diamond, and a dew-drop all lying concealed in a dirty blob of mud. But it is the best magic, for it is true magic; and it preaches us a sermon.

It tells us not only that things may be much better than they seem, but that even in the poorest beggar there may be the soul of a great man. Not so very long ago a very poor-looking man used to sell newspapers and matches at a London street corner. Little did the passers-by think that they were paying their money to one of the greatest of poets, Francis Thompson.

But the mud that most people know best is a very commonplace sort of thing, especially when it comes to be the month of November. They never think of jewels in connection with it. Indeed they often say that they just hate it. It dirties their boots, and it splashes their skirts, and it makes their feet wet and uncomfortable.

Yet I have known people who thought mud was something to be thankful for. “Take me in among the dubs, they're soft and kindly; the hard road hurts me!” said an old Scotswoman to her daughter who was wheeling her in a bath-chair.

And there are other people who have found mud extremely useful, in fact they could not well do without it. There are towns in many parts of the world in which the houses are built almost entirely of mud, and very warm and happy homes they are. At one of her mission stations in Africa, Mary Slessor had not only mud mission buildings, but her own little dwelling-house was an erection of wattle and mud. Much of her furniture too was made from mud; she had a mud sofa where she rested, and a mud seat near the fireplace, where the person who cooked for her could sit. And who does not know the wonderful little one-roomed houses that we should never see but for the mud? Where would the swallow be without the wherewithal to build them?

But mud can be something else than kindly and useful. You may have heard about how World War I soldiers suffered in the muddy trenches. Most of the war was fought in the mud. If Ruskin were alive and had walked through one of those trenches I doubt if he would have thought of it as “jingling with jewels,” for he hated ugly things. But I read these two lines somewhere just the other day

Two women looked through their prison bars;

The one saw-mud, the other saw stars.

And it may have been left to the “Tommies” of the World War I to find jewels among the terrible mud of the trenches.

What sort of jewels came within their reach, do you think? Not the sapphire, or the opal, or the diamond, but the jewels which are, in the sight of God, of great price. Patience and courage you can understand how wonderful specimens of these were found in

Flanders. Love was there too love of home, love of country, love of comrade.

There are many kinds of sorrow

In tills world of love and hate.

But there is no sterner sorrow

Than a soldier for his mate.

What do you find in the mud? What is your mud? What do you find in the boring chores or the tiresome lessons of every day? Do you find nothing but a feeling that makes you want to say “Ugh!” Your fathers and mothers know, and they could tell you, that there is a meaning in having to wade through mud. It makes men and women brave and patient and strong. So don't complain and say “Ugh!” too often. Remember that in the mud there is more than a mere chance of finding jewels.