| The Beauty of Self Control |
Chapter 13 |
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The Bible is a great book of comfort. The heart of Christ was wonderfully sensitive to suffering. He was called a man of sorrows, and it is said that he was acquainted with grief, that is, with all phases of grief. We may know a little of pain, one phase of suffering, but Christ knew the whole field of grief. Yet the griefs of the world did not make him bitter. One of the dangers with us is that we shall receive hurt from life’s trials, shall be hardened by them. Christ received no harm from anything that he suffered. He came through all painful experience with the gentleness of his heart still gentler. He never complained of God, charging him with unkindness or saying he did not care when his children suffered.
We never can know in the present world what we owe to the hard things in our lives, what pain and suffering do for us. Christ makes these experiences a school of blessing and good for us. He changes our crown of thorns into a garland of roses. We have to meet hard things in our experiences, but it is never God's will that we shall be hurt by them; he wants us always to be helped by them, made better, our lives enriched. In Barrie's Margaret Ogilvy, is a chapter with the suggestive title, How My Mother Got Her Soft Face.; She got it through suffering. Her boy was hurt. News had come that he was near death, far away from home, and the mother set out”How My Mother Got Her Soft Face.” She got it through suffering. Her boy was hurt. News had come that he was near death, far away from home, and the mother set out to go to him, hoping to reach him in time to minister to him and comfort him. Her ticket was bought; she had bidden the other children good by at the station. Then the father came out of the little telegraph office and said huskily, “He’s gone,” and they all went home again up the little brae. The mother never recovered from the shock. She was another woman ever after, however, a better woman, gentler. Barrie says, “That is how my mother got her soft face and her pathetic ways and her large charity, and why other mothers run to her when they have lost a child.” There are many other mothers who have got soft faces in the same way. They have had troubles very hard to bear, but their lives have been made more beautiful by the hardness. That is part of what Christ is to us – he leads us through pain and loss, but our faces grow softer.
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