I recently read that last year, officials of Washington’s Reagan National Airport received more than 8,600 complaints about noise. Imagine their surprise when they discovered 6,500 of them came from the same person! Some unidentified neighbor was incensed enough to call, on average, 18 times every day of the year. Can you imagine wasting so much of your life on complaining? Sadly this bad habit reaches over into our spiritual life a well. It is so bad that some gain a reputation for it such as the woman who had surgery and when the surgeon finally emerged from the operating room and said, “Your mother is extremely critical.” Her son replied, “Don’t take it personally, doctor. She’s like that with everyone.”

J. R. Miller wrote: “It is very easy to yield to the temptation to criticize others, and find fault with their way of serving Christ. There are many motives which come in to promote this unchristian habit. We are all prone to be envious of others, and hence to form unjust opinions of what they do. One of the last graces to ripen in a Christian, is usually that of rejoicing in another’s good work. It is very hard, too, to learn our Lord’s lesson: “Do not judge–or you too will be judged.” It seems natural, too, as sad as the confession may be, for us to disparage what others do, and to underestimate it.

“He was sorely discouraged. It seemed to him that all he had done, had come to nothing. There are few things we need more to guard against than discouragement. When once we come under its influence, it makes us weak, robbing us of our hope and making cowards of us. Many a life is discrowned and drawn down to failure, through discouragement.

It is surely a sad picture: this greatest of the old prophets lying there under the little bush, in the wilderness, longing to die! If he had died then and there, what an inglorious ending it would have made of his life! As it was, however, he lived to do further glorious work and to see great results from his contest with idolatry. God was kinder to him, than he knew.

It is wrong to wish ourselves dead. Life is God’s gift to us, a sacred trust for which we shall have to give account. While God keeps us living–he has something for us to do. Our prayer should be for grace to do our duty bravely and well unto the end. From Elijah’s after-experience, we learn that we would never be cast down by any discouraging experiences. The things we think have failed are often only slowly ripening into rich success. We have only to be faithful to God and to duty, and we may always rejoice. What seems failure–is often best success.”