January 31

The fruitfulness of affliction

“The more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and grew” (Exod. 1:12).
“So the Lord blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning” (Job 42:12).

The reason why we are led into trouble and out again is not merely that we may value happiness the more from having lost it once and found it again, but that we may bear upon our nature some impress which could not have been stamped except on natures just so softened to receive it. There stands your man who has been through some terrible experience and found relief. Perhaps it was a terrible sickness in which he was drawn back from the very gates of death. Perhaps it was some mighty task which the world seemed to single him out to do, to fail in which would have been ruin, and in which it seemed at one time certain that he must fail. Perhaps it was a midnight darkness that settled down over all truth, so that it seemed hopeless ever again to know anything truly of God or man.

Whatever it was, the experience has come and passed. There stands your man, relieved, released, out in the sunlight on the other side of it. What do you ask of him as he stands there? Is your sense of fitness satisfied if he is only relieved, released; if he is only like a man who, after a hard fight with the waves, has got his footing once more just where he was when he was swept away? Certainly not. The human sense of fitness asks more than that. He must have seen something in the dark, or in the transition from the dark back to the light again, which pure, unclouded light could not have shown him. Into this kneaded and tortured life there must have been pressed some knowledge which the life in its best health was too hard and insensitive to take, some knowledge which the life, restored to health, shall carry as the secret of inexhaustible happiness forth into eternity. Without these revelations the midnight and the torture would be inexplicable and hideous. But these revelations depend upon the way the soul’s eyes look for help.—Phillips Brooks.

He who for love has undergone
The worst that can befall,
Is happier thousandfold than one
Who never loved at all.
A grace within his soul has reigned,
Which nothing else can bring—
Thank God for all that I have gained
By that high suffering!
—Houghton.

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