| The Secrets of a Beautiful Life |
Chapter 12 |
Page 7 |
So it is continually in life. The things we dread — the losses, the sorrows, the adversities — bring us to new goodness and blessing which we should have missed if the painful trial had not come. Close beside the bitter fountain of Marah grew the tree that sweetened the water. Hard by every sorrow waits the comfort needed to alleviate it. Every loss has wrapped up in it some compensating gain. It is in human weakness that God’s strength is made perfect.
We may set it down as a principle, a law of Christ’s kingdom, which has no exceptions, that for every new condition or experience in any Christian life, there is a special reserve of divine goodness, whose supply will adequately meet all the needs of the hour. We need never fear, therefore, that we shall be led to any place in which we cannot have grace to live sweetly and faithfully. “As thy days, so shall thy strength be,” is the unfailing divine promise. But the grace is hidden in the need, and cannot be gotten in advance. The grace for sorrow cannot be given when we are in joy. The grace for dying we cannot get when we are in the midst of life’s duties. And surely that is not the help we need then, but, rather, wisdom and strength to live nobly, lovingly, truly. Then when we approach death we shall be sustained and led through the valley into life.
Page 7