| Week-Day Religion |
Chapter 9 |
Page 4 |
God is the Comforter. He has put up the bowers and opened the springs of comfort in almost every page of his word. At the head of almost every chapter an angel seems to stand crying, “Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God.” There is no darkness that gathers about any of God’s children into which he does not send some beams of brightness.
One dark and dreary winter day I sat in my study thinking what I should say to my people on the Sabbath. The sky had been heavily overcast all the morning. But suddenly there was a little rift in the clouds, and a few sunbeams fell on my window. As the brightness flowed in I raised my eyes, and there, on the wall, was a little bit of as glorious rainbow as ever I saw. There was some peculiar formation in the glass of the window pane which acted as a perfect prism, disentangling and unsnarling the white beam and spreading its brilliant threads in rich display upon the plastered wall of the room. So there is no life in Christian disciple, however dark and full of cares and grief, into which God does not at some hour of each day pour a little at least of the splendor of heaven. The trouble is that we shut our eyes to the comfort and will not look upon it. We see all the clouds and sit in the darkness, beholding not the sunbeams and the bits of rainbow that our Father sends into our lives to brighten and illumine them.
There is a picture of a woman seated on the low rocks, looking out upon the wild sea down into which the treasures of her heart have gone. Her face is stony with hopeless, despairing grief. Almost touching the black robe of the mourner, hovering over her shoulder, is the shadowy form of an angel softly touching the strings of a harp. But she is unaware of the angel’s nearness, nor does she hear a note of the celestial music. She bows in dumb unconsciousness, with breaking heart and unsoothed sorrow, while the heavenly consolation is so close. Thus many of God’s children sit in darkness, crushed by their sorrows, yearning for comfort and for assurance of the divine love and sympathy, hearing no soft music, no whisper of consolation, while close beside them the Master himself stands unperceived, and heaven’s sweetest songs float unheard in the very air they breathe. It is a simpler faith we need to take the consolation our Father sends when our hearts are breaking.
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