| The Ministry of Comfort |
Chapter 7 |
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The thing we are so eager to get, it may be, would do irreparable hurt to our truest life. The joy we so desire to keep, and which we think indispensable to our happiness, perhaps has done its full work for us and in us, and would better now be taken away. God knows what is best for us, and His will is not only perfect wisdom, but also perfect love. To resist it is to do harm to our own life; to reject it and insist upon having our own way would be to choose evil, not good, for ourselves.
It does not seem to us that sorrow can be the bearer of blessing to us. Yet there is no doubt that every grief or pain which comes brings a blessing wrapped in its dark folds. There is a marginal reading of a sentence of one of the Psalms which tells us that our burden is a gift – God’s gift to us. Every burden that is laid upon us, however it may have become ours, carries, folded up in it, a gift of God. God’s gifts are always good. To refuse to accept the burden would be to reject a gift of love from our Father and to thrust away a blessing sent for the enrichment of our life.
Diamonds are sometimes found in the heart of rough stones. It is said that the first discovery of diamonds in South Africa was in some pebbles which were tossed about on the ground by passing feet. A scientific man came upon a group of boys using some of these stones for marbles, and his keen eye detected the gem that was wrapped up in the rough encrusting. So it is that the stern and severe experiences which we call sorrows conceal within their forbidding exterior diamonds of God’s love and grace. We do not know how we are robbing ourselves when we refuse to accept the trials which come to us in God’s providence. Acquiescence in the divine will is taking into our life the good which or Father is offering to us.
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