Thou knowest that through our tears
Of hasty, selfish weeping
Comes surer sin, and for our petty fears
Of loss Thou hast in keeping
A greater gain than all of which we dreamed;
Thou knowest that in grasping
The bright possessions which so precious seemed
We lost them; but if, clasping
Thy faithful hand, we tread with steadfast feet
The path of Thy appointing,
There waits for us a treasury of sweet
Delight, royal anointing
With oil of gladness and of strength.
Sorrow makes deep scars; it writes its record ineffaceable on the heart which suffers; we really never get over our great griefs; we are never altogether the same after we have passed through them as we were before.
“There follows a mist and a weeping rain,
And life is never the same again.”
In one sense, sorrow never can be forgotten. The cares of a long, busy life may supervene, but the memory of the first deep sorrows in early youth lives on in perpetual freshness, as the little flowers live on beneath the cold snowdrifts, through all the long winter. The old woman of ninety years remembers her grief and sense of loss seventy years ago, when God took her first baby out of her bosom. We never can actually forget our sorrows, nor is it meant that we should do so.
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