May 21

Joy in suffering

“Ye took joyfully the spoiling of your goods” (Heb. 10:34).
“My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations” (James 1:2).

Perhaps there is no more remarkable manifestations of the power of the Holy Ghost in the early Church, than the sweetness and grandeur with which they endured all things for Jesus’ sake. Beaten with stripes and humiliated before the council, they came together, not to condole with each other or to show their bleeding wounds, but to rejoice that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for the Name of Jesus.
Hunted out of Iconium by a mob of respectable women, pelted with stones and hooted from the community, the “disciples were filled with joy, and with the Holy Ghost.” Theirs was a gladness that did not recognize their sufferings, but lifted them above persecution, and counted it but part of their coronation.


And so the power of the Holy Ghost will give us the heroism of endurance and enable us, like our Master, for the joy set before us, to endure the cross, despising the shame. It will bring about a spirit of self-denial and holy sacrifice; it will make it easy for us to let go of things and give up things “and endure all things for the elect’s sake,” and to say with the great apostle, “Yea, and if I be offered upon the sacrifice and service of your faith, I joy, and rejoice with you all.”
—A. B. Simpson.

We make our songs in the day of our gladness
When life is all laughter and joy and delight,
When never a shadow has clouded our sunshine;
But God giveth songs in the night. . . .

He giveth songs in the night of affliction,
When earth has no sun and the heavens no star;
Like a comforting touch in the desolate darkness
His voice stealeth in from afar. . . .

Give us Thy songs, O Thou Maker of music!
Teach us to sing, O Thou Bringer of joy!
Till nothing can silence the notes of our triumph
And naught our rejoicing destroy.
—Annie Johnson Flint.

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