GOD weighs and measures,
bounds and ordains, my sorrows!
(Alexander Smellie, "The Secret Place" 1907)
is working for us a far more exceeding and
eternal weight of glory!" 2 Corinthians 4:17
It is good to know that there is a limit
to affliction. It is but for a moment--
it has its appointed end.
Not always will the war go on.
Not always will the seas be tempest-driven.
Not always will the rains descend
and the fierce winds blow.
GOD weighs and measures,
bounds and ordains, my sorrows!
For seven months Mr. Monod lay in helpless
suffering. Week by week his pain increased
in its severity, until he had not a minute when
he was free from it. But this was what he wrote:
"The Desert in the morning,
Gethsemane in the afternoon,
Golgotha in the evening!
Well, the Desert with CHRIST,
Gethsemane with CHRIST,
Golgotha with CHRIST!
This is better than all the pleasures of sin!"
And of these painful mornings and
afternoons and evenings, GOD
has fixed and foreordained an end!
It is good to know that there is a purpose
in affliction. It works for me, in my service,
on my behalf. Affliction does not rise out
of the ground, nor fall on me by chance--
as an unfortunate, aimless, undirected,
capricious thing. (Job 5:6, Job 1:21)
Affliction is the instrument and
agent of my FATHER in Heaven!
By it HE would . . .
teach my mind,
soften and expand my heart,
give new robustness to my faith,
add vigor to my prayers,
fructify all my graces and character.
There is a touching incident of Mr. Wodrow:
He was much affected with his worthy son's death--
it being somewhat sudden and surprising. Yet he
behaved very Christly under that sharp affliction.
He went down to the place where his son's
corpse was. He stayed some time.
They inquired what he had been doing
there. "I was," says he, "thanking GOD
for thirty-one years' loan of my dear son."
These are the flowers of
submission, of patience, of trust--
which grow in the clefts
of a breaking heart!
It is good to know that there is a
coronation after affliction. It is
the prelude to an eternal weight of glory!
And the glory will be none the less--
but all the more, because it has been
heralded by the grief. I am fitted
for the purity of the glorious inheritance,
by the cleansing and refining discipline
to which I am subjected on the way
to it. I welcome its sunshine and rest,
because I have been out in the midnight
when the fierce gales were abroad.
There are notes and chords in my everlasting
song, which never could have been there,
if I had not discovered in my afflictions . . .
the grace of the FATHER,
and the sympathy of the SON,
and the comforts of the HOLY SPIRIT.
not worth comparing with the glory that will
be revealed in us!" Romans 8:18
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