Rejoice in Thy Youth

"Rejoice in your youth," but let it be a Christian rejoicing. Go to no place where the stainless Jesus can not accompany you. Do nothing that would offend His holiness. Avoid the company of those in whose hearts and lives His love finds no room.

1923 Walter A. Maier Walther League Messenger

The following article by Walter A. Maier is taken from the May 1923 issue of the Walther League Messenger, Volume XXXI, Number 10.

The joy-season of the year has come, the verdant month that hastens spring to summer, the throbbing weeks when nature hangs her green mantle over the re-awakened world. “Rejoice! Rejoice!” the new born wealth of this budding universe calls out to us, this wonder sphere of ours that cold and unfeeling men describe as voiceless and inanimate. “Rejoice! Rejoice!” entreats the tender blue of wistful skies, the heavens that tell the glory of God. “Rejoice! Rejoice!” resounds the echo from the world that lies below these skies, this earth of ours where flowers paint the laughing soil and where the unlocked newness of a throbbing life teaches the sullen fields to smile. Whether we look—and see the blushing rose, the emerald carpet of grassy softness, the woods that live with color and with strength of renewed purity; or whether we listen—and hear the chirping robin, the splashing leap of swollen brooks, the wind that softly finds its way over hill and vale to help draw out the treasures of the black and bursting soil; what we perceive with all the senses which the good Creator has given us repeats the paean of joy: “Rejoice! Rejoice!”

And youth is the joy-season of life, the bridge that spans the years which separate the carefree days of childhood from the furrowed struggle of adult responsibilities. The precious years of youth come but once in a lifetime and they are so full of life and action, so overflowing with energy and vitality, that even Solomon whose woeful “Vanity of vanities” shows the gloom which settled in his heart, rouses himself from his dejection to declare: “Rejoice in thy youth and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth.”

Faith in Jesus is not a thing of pessimism and darkness. It is not a down-cast and joy-killing religion that has no room for laughter, no time for innocent pleasure, no interest in the enjoyment of God-granted gifts. God is happy when the buoyancy of youth finds its expression in the enjoyment of the great variety of pleasures which He, the all-wise Father, has prepared for us. He only asks that Christian young people, while enjoying this freedom, be scrupulously careful in the choice of their pleasures and painfully conscientious in their determination to avoid all places and occasions where they might be led to join in denying their blessed Savior.

The voice of the wise Solomon rings out in our day and tells young men and women not only: “Rejoice in the Lord,” but also: “But know thou that for all these things God will bring thee into judgment.” Because sincerely Christian young people know and realize that there is an inevitable accounting for our every action, they will flee all pleasures that might pollute their faith and ask God’s help in rejecting all temptations that tend to diminish their love toward their Savior. If others who profess to be Christians throw themselves into the whirlpool of worldly pleasures and are driven swiftly into the maelstrom of sin; if the Christianity of many people who surround us stops where their pleasure begins, when they kneel at the altars of Christ on Sunday, but on Monday bow down before the golden calf of this world’s unclean pleasures and sinful pastimes, we, who only a few weeks ago have stood on Calvary’s heights, and have seen the terrible consequences of sin and the appalling result of human depravity must always remember that even our hours of pleasure and recreation must not lead us to deny this Savior nor to crowd out from our lives the picture of His sufferings for our sins and shortcomings.

“Rejoice in your youth,” but let it be a Christian rejoicing. Go to no place where the stainless Jesus can not accompany you. Do nothing that would offend His holiness. Avoid the company of those in whose hearts and lives His love finds no room. Remember at all times, that “in God we live and move and have our being,“—and this spirit and determination will show itself in a wholesome, happy, and joy-spreading life.

But while much of the tinsel and the glitter and the glamour of this pleasure-crazed world of ours is thus forbidden to Christian young people, they have pleasures and happinesses which can be made to mean inexpressibly more than gaudy and shabby attractions which make their appeal to sin-stricken hearts. We have the pleasures of Christian companionship, the joy of vibrating nature, the happiness of a Christian home. We have song, music, books, laughter; we have play, sport, recreation, and in and through all this we have our Savior Jesus, who is ours not only in sorrow and affliction, but ours also in pleasure and happiness. Therefore “Rejoice in thy youth and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth.”

W. A. M.