THE WAY CHRIST IS KNOWN IN BEREAVEMENT

^[p. 155] THE WAY CHRIST IS KNOWN IN BEREAVEMENT

The one who for many years has been walking beside you, as a fellow-heir of the grace of life, is now no more with you, and you have to journey on more solitary, and yet needing more care and company every day. You have to feel the need in order that you may look for and enjoy the way in which He will meet it. The more really desolate any one is here, the more will such a one find in Christ, if the heart truly turns to Him. He in His discipline allows the blank, not that you should sorrow and pine because of it, but in order that He may occupy it Himself. He has removed a partial and a transitory comfort, in order that He might fill the empty space with what is perfect and eternal. He often gives us in the human friend the mould of what He would be to us as the perfect and enduring one. As a mould is used to form the gold and the silver into shapes and figures approved by the owner, so does the Lord teach us that our dearest friend is only, in comparison, a mould for Himself; and as the mould is made only of earth, so is there as great a contrast between the human friend and the Lord Himself as between the earthen vessel and the gold. You would not complain of the mould being broken and no more at your service if you were in possession of Christ as the One who had only been using the mould to bring Himself into that very peculiar nearness to you which the mould expressed. All that was really good in the mould was of Christ - the real attractiveness of it was derived from Christ. Very near you, very useful to you, and very dear to you - but a greater than the mould is here and beside you, and you in spirit are called by Him to enjoy His divine preciousness without any mixture, failure, or cessation. I know you must feel it a very lonely time, but every gourd in time must come down, that the full beauty of Christ may satisfy and delight our hearts. May this be your experience richly.