Do not shut yourself up with your sorrow.—A friend, in the first anguish of bereavement, wrote, saying that he must give up the Christian ministries in which he had delighted; and I replied immediately, urging him not to do so, because there is no solace for heartpain like ministry. The temptation of great suffering is towards isolation, withdrawal from the life of men, sitting alone, and keeping silence. Do not yield to it. Break through the icy chains of reserve, if they have already gathered. Arise, anoint your head, and wash your face; go forth to do your duty with willing through chastened steps. Selfishness, of every kind, in its activities or its introspection, is a hurtful thing, and shuts out the help and love of God. Sorrow is apt to be selfish. The soul occupied with its own griefs, and refusing to be comforted, becomes presently a Dead Sea, full of brine and salt, over which birds do not fly, and beside which no green thing grows. And thus we miss the very lesson that God would teach us. His constant war is against the self-life, and every pain He inflicts is to lessen its hold on us. But we may thwart His purpose, and extract poison from His gifts, as men get opium and alcohol from innocent plants.
The Gift of Suffering
by F.B. Meyer
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Believe that in days of sorrow He is sowing light for the righteous, and gladness for the upright in heart. Look forward to the reaping. Anticipate the joy which is set before you, and shall flood your heart with minstrel notes when patience has had her perfect work.
You will live to recognize the wisdom of God’s choice for you. You will one day see that the thing you wanted was only second best. You will be surprised to remember that you once nearly broke your heart and spilt the wine of your life, for what would never have satisfied you, if you had caught it, as the child the butterfly or soap-bubble. You will meet again your beloved. You will have again your love. You will become possessed of a depth of character, a breadth of sympathy, a fund of patience, an ability to understand and help others, which, as you lay them at Christ’s feet for Him to use, will make you glad that you were afflicted.
The Gift of Suffering
by F.B. Meyer -
Who can wonder at the complaints of the aimlessness, the vanity, the weariness of life? People either have no plan, or they have got a wrong one. “What’s the fashion?” “What do others do?” “What’s the correct thing?” How much better and wiser to believe that God has a perfect plan for each of us, and that He is unfolding it a bit at a time, by the events which He puts into our life each day!
The Gift of Suffering
by F.B. Meyer -
God does not show us the whole plan of our life at a burst, but unfolds it to us bit by bit. Each day He gives us the opportunity of weaving a curtain, carving a peg, fashioning the metal. We know not what we do. But at the end of our life the disjointed pieces will suddenly come together, and we shall see the symmetry and beauty of the Divine thought. Then we shall be satisfied. In the meantime let us believe that God’s love and wisdom are doing the very best for us.
The Gift of Suffering
by F.B. Meyer -
You felt you were Christ’s companion; that He was using you, and there was a constant interchange of holy fellowship between Him and you. But for some reason which you cannot understand the morning light has died out of your life, and instead of your sitting with Christ upon the throne, in the conscious enjoyment of fellowship with Him, you have been brought down into the very dust of neglect and forsakenness; and for a long time now you have been saying, “My God, my God! Why hast Thou forsaken me?” You cannot imagine why. The probability is, that in your case it is not the result of any sin on your part, or of any neglect of your duties, but because God is desirous of ascertaining whether you love Him for the light of His face or for Himself.
The Gift of Suffering
by F.B. Meyer -
I hope no woman here will ever allow herself to lose her ideals, even though she meets with resistance and disappointment; still dress your sweetest, look your nicest, and care for the home, making it as happy as possible, though your heart is like lead within you. In middle life and afterwards we get beyond our ideals. They are like the withered flowers of a bridal bouquet—a handful of withered leaves. The heart that sits alone, when the light of some great hope has passed, may well be said to sit “in the dust.”
The Gift of Suffering
by F.B. Meyer -
“Be the day dreary, be the day long; at last it ringeth to evensong.” The watcher knows that presently the darkest night will thin into the grey dawn. There is always an end to things. Pain is limited. At last there comes the swooning, when we can suffer no more, and we fall into a gentle sleep, and forget ourselves. There is always a limit, always a “thus far, and no further.”
The Gift of Suffering
by F.B. Meyer -
Do you cherish any resentment or hatred towards another, to whom you refuse to be reconciled?
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Is there some injustice which you refuse to forgive, some charge which you refuse to pay, some wrong which you refuse to confess?
Are you allowing something yourself which you would be the first to condemn in others, but which you argue may be permitted in your own case, because of certain reasons with which you attempt to smother the remonstrances of conscience?
The Gift of Suffering
by F.B. Meyer -
In some cases the hindrance to conscious blessedness lies not in sins, but in weights which hang around the soul. Sin is that which is always and everywhere wrong; but a weight is anything which may hinder or impede the Christian life, without being positively sin. And thus a thing may be a weight to one which is not so to another. Each must be fully persuaded in his own mind. And wherever the soul is aware of its life being hindered by the presence of only one thing, then, however harmless in itself, and however innocently permitted by others, there can be no alternative, but it must be cast aside…
The Gift of Suffering
by F.B. Meyer -
Perhaps you look too much inwards on self, instead of outwards on the Lord Jesus.—The healthiest people do not think about their health; the weak induce disease by morbid introspection. If you begin to count your heartbeats, you will disturb the rhythmic action of the heart. If you continually imagine a pain anywhere, you will produce it. And there are some true children of God who induce their own darkness by morbid self-scrutiny. They are always going back on themselves, analyzing their motives, re-considering past acts of consecration, or comparing themselves with themselves. In one form or another self is the pivot of their life, albeit that it is undoubtedly a religious life. What but darkness can result from such a course? There are certainly times in our lives when we must look within, and judge ourselves, that we may not be judged. But this is only done that we may turn with fuller purpose of heart to the Lord. And when once done, it needs not to be repeated. “Leaving the things behind” is the only safe motto. The question is, not whether we did as well as we might, but whether we did as well as we could at the time.
We must not spend all our lives in cleaning our windows, or in considering whether they are clean, but in sunning ourselves in God’s blessed light. That light will soon show us what still needs to be cleansed away, and will enable us to cleanse it with unerring accuracy.
The Gift of Suffering
by F.B. Meyer
SO GOOD QUOTES 