| J.R. Miller D.D. | Page 4 |
Many of the world’s best things have been born of affliction. The sweetest songs ever sung on earth have been called out by suffering. The richest blessings that we enjoy have come to us out of the fire. The good things we inherit from the past are the purchase of suffering and sacrifice. Our redemption comes from Gethsemane and Calvary. We get heaven through Christ’s tears and blood. Whatever is richest and most valuable in life anywhere has been in the fire. Our love for one another may be strong and true in the sunny days, but it never reaches its holiest and fullest expression until pain has touched our hearts, and called out the hidden treasures of affliction. Even the love of a mother for her child, deep and pure as it is, never reaches its full wondrousness of devotion and sacrifice until the child suffers, and the mother bends over it in yearning and solicitude. The same is true of all the home loves: the best and divinest qualities in them come out only in the fires.
The household that has endured sorrow in the true spirit of love and faith, emerges from it undestroyed, untarnished, with purer, tenderer affections, with less of passion, of selfishness, and of earthliness. When husband and wife stand together beside the dead child, they are drawn to each other as never before: their common grief is sacramental. Children that remain are dearer to parents after one has been taken. Brothers and sisters grow more thoughtful and patient in their mutual intercourse when the home circle has been broken. There is in an empty chair in a Christian home a wondrous power to soften the asperities of nature, and refine all the affections and feelings. The cloud of grief that hangs over a household, like the summer cloud above the fields and gardens, leaves blessings.
“Is it raining, little flower?
Be glad of rain.
Too much sun would’wither thee.
‘Twill shine again.
The sky is very black, ‘tis true,
But just behind it shines the blue.
Art thou weary, tender heart?
Be glad of pain;
In sorrow sweetest things will grow
As flowers in rain.
God watches, and thou wilt have sun
When clouds their perfect work have done.”
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