| The Ministry of Comfort |
Chapter 4 |
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This is true, for example, of the friends we have. We are sure of the goodness that gives them to us. They bring divine blessings from God. We say of them, “The Lord gave – blessed be the name of the Lord.” We have no doubt whatever concerning the goodness of God in giving our friends to us. But by and by they are taken from us. One of every two friends must some day see the other called away, and must stand, bearing an unshared grief, by the other’s grave. Can we finish Job’s song of faith then and say, “The Lord hath taken away: blessed be the name of the Lord”? Can we believe that there is as true and holy love in the taking away as there was in the giving?
It is not necessary that we be able to discover or to see clearly the goodness in the experience of loss or sorrow. It is here that faith comes in. We believe in God as our Father, and we may trust His goodness, even when it seems to be tearing down what awhile ago it built up, when it takes from us what on a day bright with love and blessing it gave. The simplest faith is that which asks no questions and does not care to know the reasons for God’s ways. Ofttimes we cannot find reasons – God does not show us why He does this or that.
Yet while we may not be able fully to understand, we may conceive of elements of goodness even in the taking away. For one thing, we know it is better for our friends in that home of love into which God calls them than it ever could have been here. The true thought of Christian dying is that it is a phase or process of life. The sorest misfortune that could come to any one would be never to die. There are developments of life which can be reached only by passing through the experience of dying. Happy as our friends may have been here, and rich and beautiful as was their life, we know that they have entered sweeter deeper joy, and that their life is fuller and richer where they now are with Christ. True love in its very essence is unselfish, and it ought to mean much to us in reconciling us to our loss, to know that our friends have been taken into larger blessedness. We ought to rejoice in their new happiness and in the greater honour which is shown to them in their receiving into heaven.
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