September 18

God’s purposes of affliction

“And the afflicted people thou wilt save” (2 Sam. 22:28).
“For they verily for a few days chastened us after their own pleasure: but he for our profit, that we might be partakers of his holiness” (Heb. 12:10).

How should we regard ourselves when causes of great sorrow fall upon us? First of all, we should carefully inquire whether these providences have come down from God out of Heaven, as judgments for wrongdoing, or as merely disciplinary trials of faith, and seek unto God accordingly. In neither case should we lose heart, or hope, or faith in God. We should conclude, at once, that God sees in us something which He desires to refine and perfect into a thing of beauty and perfection, for His own glory and ours, too; that He sees in us undeveloped capacities for good—capacities which He desires to perfect for the reception of those great and eternally enduring joys which He has prepared for us. Why should we be afraid of causes of sorrow, when, if we hold fast our integrity and faith in God, they are only the birth-throes of everlasting consolations, and deep and ever-enduring joys otherwise impossible to us.
—Asa Mahan.

Is not the way to heavenly gain
Through earthly grief and loss?
Rest must be won by toil and pain—
The crown repays the Cross.
As woods, when shaken by the breeze,
Take deeper, firmer root,
As winter’s frosts but make the trees
Abound in summer fruit;
So every Heaven-sent pang and throe
That Christian firmness tries,
But nerves us for our work below,
And forms us for the skies.
—Henry Francis Lyte.

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