| Devotional Hours with the Bible |
Chapter 23 |
Page 6 |
The comfort to us in our sorrows and bereavements is that nothing has gone wrong, that God’s purpose is going on in all the wrecks of human hopes. Your friend passed away the other night. You thought he would have been with you for many years. You had plans covering a long future of happiness. You were appalled when the doctor said your friend could not live. Life to you would be dreary, lonely and empty without this one who had become so dear to you. You say: “My friend stayed so brief a time! I could almost wish that I had not let my heart fasten its tendrils about this dear life, since so soon it was torn away from me.” Say it not. It is worthwhile to love and to let your heart pour out all its sweetness in loving, though it be for but a day, and then to have the bliss give way to grief. Richard Watson Gilder writes:
Because the rose must fade,
Shall I not love the rose?
Because the summer shade
Passes when winter blows,
Shall I not rest me there
In the cool air?
Ah, yes, because the rose
Doth fade like sunset skies;
Because rude winter blows
All bare, and music dies—
Therefore, now is to me
Eternity.
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