| The Beauty of Self Control |
Chapter 2 |
Page 5 |
We cannot afford to lose pain out of the world or out of our life. It means too much to us. We owe too much, get too many joys and treasures from it, to have it taken out of our lives. We owe to suffering many of the treasures of experience. Without pain we never could know Christ deeply, intimately, experimentally. Two friends may love each other very sincerely, without suffering together, but it is a new friendship into which they enter when they stand side by side in a great sorrow. Grief reveals Christ and draws him closer to us, and we love him better afterwards. To take pain from the world would be to rob life of its divinest joy, it richest blessings. If the share never cut through the soil there would be no furrows and no golden harvests.
“Put pain from out the world, what room was left
For thanks to God, for love to man?”
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