The path of the Christian is not always bright with sunshine; he has his seasons of darkness and of storm. True, it is written in God's Word, "Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace;" and it is a great truth, that saving religion is calculated to give a man happiness here below as well as bliss above. Experience tells us that if the course of the just is, "As the shining light that shines more and more unto the perfect day,"(Proverbs 4:18) yet sometimes that light is eclipsed. At certain periods, clouds cover the believer's sun, and he walks in darkness and sees no light.
There are many who have rejoiced in the presence of God for a season. They have basked in the sunshine in the earlier stages of their Christian pilgrimage. They have walked along the "green pastures," by the side of the "still waters." (Psalm 23:2) But suddenly they find that their glorious sky is clouded; and instead of the fertile land of Goshen, they have to tread the barren desert. And in the place of sweet waters they find troubled streams, bitter to their taste. And they say, "Surely if I were a child of God, then this would not happen to me!"
Oh, say not so, you who are walking in darkness. The best of God's saints must drink the wormwood; the dearest of His redeemed children must bear the cross. No Christian has ever enjoyed perpetual prosperity. At times, every believer must hang his harp on the willows.
Perhaps the Lord allotted you a smooth and unclouded path at first, because you were weak and timid. He tempered the harsh north wind, to the shorn lamb. But now that you are stronger in the spiritual life, you must enter upon the riper and rougher experience of God's full-grown children. We need strong winds and tempests: to exercise our faith, to tear off the rotten bough of self-dependence, and to root us more firmly in Jesus.
The day of evil, reveals to us the value of our glorious hope!
[Charles H. Spurgeon]
Jeremiah 17:17 ... Be not a terror unto me: thou art my hope in the day of evil.
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