“The past is always holy–every heart
Holds something that has grown to be divine;
What haunts there are where memory walks apart!
Each common place has some invisible shrine.
“And every heart that throbs, and every eye
Has some strange tenderness towards something lost–
Some secret spell, chance words will oft apply,
Melting their fountains from a winter’s frost.”
At first we would be disposed to say that no blessings can come out of bereavements. But the grace of God has such wondrous power that even from the saddest desolating of a home good may come.
One blessing from the breaking of a home circle is that thus we are led to think of our better home. If things went always smoothly with us here, if no flowers ever faded, if there were never any interruption in our earthly joys, we should not think of the enduring things of the invisible world. It is when earthly good fails us that we learn to set our affections on heavenly good. Many a man has never found his home in God till his human nest was desolated by the storms of sorrow.
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