| The Ministry of Comfort |
Chapter 10 |
Page 4 |
Tennyson makes Rizpah say, “The night has crept into my heart, and begun to darken my eyes.” So it is with these people who live perpetually in the shadows and glooms of their own sorrows. The darkness has crept into their soul, and all the joyous brightness has passed out of their life, until their very vision has become so blurred that they can no more even discern the glad and lovely colours in God’s universe.
Few perversions of life could be sadder than this dwelling ever in the glooms and shadows of past griefs. It is the will of God that we should turn our eyes away from our sorrows, that we should let the dead past bury its dead, while we go on with reverent earnestness to the new duties and the new joys that await us. By standing and weeping over the grave where it is buried we cannot get back what we have lost. When David’s child was dead, he dried his tears and went at once to God’s house and worshipped, saying, “Now he is dead, wherefore should I fast? Can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me.” Instead of weeping over the grave where his dead was not, he turned his eyes forward toward the glory in which his child was waiting for him, and began with new ardour to press toward that home. He turned all the pressure of his grief into the channel of holy living.
That is the way every believer in Christ should deal with his sorrows. Weeping inconsolably beside a grave can never give back loves’ vanished treasure. Nor can any blessing come out of such sadness. It does not make the heart any softer; it develops no feature of Christ likeness in the life: it only embitters our present joys and stunts the growth of al beautiful things. The graces of the heart are like flower plants; they grow well only in the sunshine.
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