| The Ministry of Comfort |
Chapter 6 |
Page 5 |
True comfort has a strange power to heal, to bind up hearts’ wounds, to turn sorrow into joy. The Christian home which has been broken by bereavement, under the wise tuit on of Christ and the gentle influences of the divine love, is made to have a deeper happiness than ever it had before. The truth of immortality brings back the missing ones, as it were, and they sit again in their old places. The vacant chairs seem filled once more, and the love of the absent ones appears as real and as tender as it did when they were here. Christian faith nullifies the sad work of death, and binds again the broken ties.
“There is no vacant chair. The loving meet–
A group unbroken–smitten, who knows how?
One sitteth silent only, in her usual seat;
We gave her once that freedom. Why not now?
“Perhaps she is too weary and needs rest;
She needed it too often, nor could we
Bestow. God gave it, knowing how to do so best.
Which of us would disturb her? Let her be.
“There is no vacant chair. If she will take
The mood to listen mutely be it done.
By her least mood we crossed, for which the heart must ache,
Plead not nor question! Let her have this one.
“Death is a mood of life. It is no whim
By which life’s Giver mocks a broken heart.
Death is life’s reticence. Still audible to Him,
The hushed voice, happy, speaketh on, apart.
“There is no vacant chair. To love is still
To have. Nearer in memory than to the eye
And dearer yet to anguish than to comfort, will
We hold her by our love that shall not die.
“For while it doth not, thus she cannot. Try!
Who can put out the motion or the smile?
The old ways of being noble all with her laid by?
Because we love, she is. Then trust awhile.”
Page 5
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