SICKNESS AND SORROW
SICKNESS AND SORROW
I do not think that bodily suffering weans the heart from the present scene to the same extent that sorrow does. Bodily suffering too often engrosses one’s own personal attention; one feels so helpless, and there is such a constant effort to remedy it, and indulgence often is excused on the plea of consideration for one’s weakness. But in sorrow, where for instance it is on account of the sufferings or death of one very dear to us, and which is indeed the cloud by day, we grow into the sense that we are in the valley of the shadow of death. When there is suffering of body there is a longing to get well; and often resistance to the suffering, so that we are taught how helpless we are; but in sorrow [p. 71] on account of another, everything around has lost its interest for us. In bodily suffering there is inability to enjoy or to do the things which others do. But in sorrow everything has lost its enjoyment, there is a dark shadow on everything; hence sorrow softens and mellows in a way that bodily suffering does not. In sorrow the heart retires from everything and everybody; I am cut off in sadness and affliction from the present scene, but at the very moment when all is a blank here, when I have descended to the depths, I find Him beside me who makes known His heart to me where no one else could reach me. “Thy rod and thy staff they comfort me” (Psalm 23: 4). It is then one is really softened, because the heart knows in its saddest moments the love of Christ; and hence, instead of being vexed or soured, you come out of it softened, because you have learned in your sorrow the greatest love; so that where the greatest darkness was, the greatest light has sprung up. The moment of the deepest depression is not only marked with an Ebenezer, but there your heart will turn from henceforth as the moment of its deepest joy in the knowledge of His love. In sickness, it is more relief, or His power and goodness one learns and looks for; but in sorrow, where there is nothing to cheer here, He comes in and makes known to the heart the greatest cheer; so that the saddest moment connected with earth becomes the happiest moment, because of His presence where there is fulness of joy and pleasures for evermore. You will easily trace the effect of each on souls. In one, there is the knowledge of His hand and His power, they are receptive, and often dependent. In the other, in addition, the heart refuses to bind itself to anything again here. It has gone through the pains of death; it is not hardened, but it has received the greatest expansion through the heart of Christ which reached it in its widowhood.