November 14

"So the Lord blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning."—Job 42:12.

THROUGH his griefs Job came to his heritage.

For example, he learned that there is no place where earth's sorrows are more felt than up in heaven. God had foreseen his disease and loneliness, had arranged and controlled them. No chance, or force, or fate sends me the storm. It comes from Christ's Father and mine.

And he was tried that his godliness might be confirmed. Are not my troubles intended to deepen my character, and to robe me in graces I had little of before? I come to my glory through eclipses, tears, death. My ripest fruit grows against the roughest wall.

And Job's afflictions left him with higher conceptions of God and with lowlier thoughts of himself. Now, he cried, mine eye seeth Thee; wherefore I abhor myself. And if, through pain and loss, I feel God so near in His majesty that I bend low before Him and pray, Thy will be done, I gain very much.

It was another element in his reward that he was a partaker in the sufferings of Christ. God's son with many shortcomings was the forerunner of God's perfect Son. Shall my Master sink beneath His crushing load, while I am carried to heaven on a bed of down? Nay, I will bear His reproach.

Yes, and God gave Job glimpses of the future glory. In those wearisome days and nights, he penetrated within the veil; he knew that his Redeemer liveth. There is nothing like suffering to quicken my anticipations of the Sabbath rest. I sorrow, and I hope.

Surely the latter end of Job was more blessed than the beginning.