June 8
Daily Gleanings of the Saintly LifeSaturday of the Second Week after Easter
No chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous. Hebrews 12:11.
EVERY trial has its own weight. It is our wisdom and humility to own this. Were it not so people would not bear petty trials so ill. It is not lack of patience to be "heavy and exceeding sorrowful under it." Our loving Lord sanctified such human feeling by the heaviness which in the garden He allowed to come over His soul. Impatience is not to be cut to the heart with anguish, nor to writhe in agony, but, not "out of the deep, to call upon God." Impatience is not mutely to shrink from suffering, but to toss feverishly, forgetting God. The heart may, and must, rise and sink; we can by God's grace control it, keep it outwardly still, hinder it from having any wrong vent. We cannot hush its beatings. Hard words will vex; unkindness will pierce; neglect will wound; threatened evils will make the soul quiver; sharp pain or weariness will rack the body or make it restless; cold will fret the frame; hunger will gnaw it. But what says the Psalmist? "When my heart is vexed I will complain." To whom? Not of God, but to God. As thou learnest this lesson to carry all thy sorrows to God, and lie at thy Saviour's Feet and spread thy grief before Him, thou wilt find a calm come over thee, thou knowest not whence; thou wilt see through the clouds
A bright opening, for . . . When skies are dark and drear, When winds are high and clouds are low, And men want words of cheer: While sorrow lives, Thy presence gives A hope that it will die; When sorrow dies, then I arise And melt into the sky.