| Things to Live For |
Chapter 21 |
Page 4 |
One of the blessings of suffering or trial is that by it we are fitted for becoming more helpful in our ministry to others. The mother who has lost a little child, and has received the divine consolation, can afterward go to other mothers in like sorrow, and comfort them as she could not have comforted them before meeting her own grief. Now she knows what their grief is, and can enter into their experience. And that is a vital quality in the consoler’s art. Without the power of sympathy we can never give strength or help to one whose heart is breaking. This power one gets through suffering. It was necessary, even for Jesus, when preparing to be our friend and our helper at all our points of need, to enter into real human life, and live it through to the end, just as we have to live it, in order that he might know all human experience. Because of this we are told that in heaven he is now touched with the feeling of our infirmities, and can understand all that we suffer. Those of his people who are led through suffering are also being prepared to become helpers of others in the truest and deepest way.
This is one of the compensations of sorrow which is sometimes overlooked by those who are in trouble. They ask why God is afflicting them, what they have done to deserve such suffering. It would help all such to endure more patiently were they to remember that God is preparing them to become comforters and guides to others in life’s dark paths. One writes:–
“Perhaps you have heard of the method strange,
Of violin makers in distant lands,
Who, by breaking and mending with skilful hands,
Make instruments having a wider range
Than ever was possible for the, so long
As they were new, unshattered, and strong.
“Have you ever thought when the heart was sad,
When the days seem dark and the nights unending
That the broken heart, by the Father’s mending,
Was made through sorrow a helper glad,
Whose service should lighten more and more
The weary one’s burdens as never before?
“Have you ever thought when the heart was sad,
When the days seem dark and the nights unending
That the broken heart, by the Father’s mending,
Was made through sorrow a helper glad,
Whose service should lighten more and more
The weary one’s burdens as never before?”
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