| Things to Live For |
Chapter 20 |
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A gift from a friend bears love. It is a token and pledge of love. God sent this gift to us because he loves us. It is a memento of divine affection. It may be hard for us to understand this. It may be a burden of pain, and pain sees so opposed to comfort that we cannot see how it can be a gift of love. It may be sorrow; and sorrow never for the present sees to be joyous, but always grievous. It may be loss, – the stripping from us of life’s pleasant things, leaving emptiness and desolation. How such burdens as these can be tokens of divine affection, God’s gift of love, it is hard for us to conceive. Yet we know that God is our Father, and that his love for us never fails. Whatever comes from his hand to us must be sent in love.
If our burden is a gift of love, it must have good in it for us, some blessing. No doubt this is true of everything God sends to us. Susan Coolidge writes of the messenger who comes in the name of the Lord:–
“Who is this that cometh in the Lord’s dear name?
Wan and drooping on his road, very faint and lame;
Pale brow overshadowed, eyes all quenched and dim–
Is it Pain who cometh? Did the Lord send him?
“Who is this that cometh in the Lord’s dear name?
Meeting never praises, only tears and blame;
Mourning veil to hide him, eyes which tears o’erbrim–
Is it Grief who cometh? Did the Lord send him?
“Never messenger shall come if he be not sent;
We will welcome one and all, since the Lord so meant;
Welcome Pain or Grief or Death, saying with glad acclaim,
‘Blessed be all who come to us in the Lord’s dear name!’”
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