AUGUST 23RD, 1904

AUGUST 23RD, 1904

MY DEAR —, — ... What should we say or do amid all these experiences of weakness and sorrow if we could not fall back on the Father’s care? No one realises as the Christian how entirely everything here is blighted by sin and its effects, but the Christian knows a blessed secret in the midst of all the desolation — he knows what is in the heart of God, and is persuaded that none of these things can separate him from the love of Christ or of God. Our future is “glory with Christ above”, and if our eye is upon this blessed goal, to which the ways of God are leading us, the sufferings of this present time are seen to be not worthy of comparison. If our present affliction is made, through God’s wisdom and love, to form some trait of Christ’s moral beauty in us which otherwise would have been lacking, we shall not regret it in that scene of accomplished bliss where He will be admired in His saints. If our sorrows now contribute to our being formed to shed forth some brighter ray of the glory of Christ in a universe of bliss, shall we murmur or repine at them? Shall we not rather adoringly praise the infinite love that so patiently and wisely forms us according to its own wonderful designs?

When God’s work is unveiled, in what excellence of divine beauty will it all appear!

The threads which often seem so tangled now will there be seen interwoven with matchless skill in a pattern of beauty and glory. Oh! for more simple confidence in divine love and wisdom! More patience, more of the light of hope brightening our hearts in the present reality of all that will be manifested in that day!

Yours affectionately in the Lord,

August 23rd, 1904.