The Necessity of Afflictions # 2

The Necessity of Afflictions # 2)

Believer! Rejoice in the thought that the rod, the chastening rod - is in the hands of the living, loving Saviour who died for you! Tribulation is the King's Highway - and yet that highway is paved with love. As some flowers before shedding their fragrance require to be pressed - so does your God see fit to bruise you. As some birds are said to sing their sweetest notes when the thorn pierces their bosom - so does He appoint affliction to lacerate, that you may be driven to the wing, singing, in your upward soaring, "My heart is fixed, O God, my heart is fixed!" "Those," says the heavenly Leighton, "whom He means to make the most resplendent - he has ofenest His tools upon." "Our troubles," says another, "seem in His Word to be ever in His mind. Perhaps half the commands and half the promises He gives us there - are given to us as troubled men."

Be it ours to say, "Lord, I will love You, not only despite of Your rod - but because of Your rod. I will rush into the very arms that are chastising me! When your voice calls, as to Abraham of old, to prepare for bitter trial - be it mine to respond with bounding heart, "Here am I!" - and to read in the rainbow which spans my darkest cloud, "He chastens, Because He loves!" And He pities, because He loves. 

When tempted in our season of overwhelming sorrow to say, "never has there been so dark a cloud, never a heart so stripped and desolate as mine!" Let this thought hush every murmur, "it is your Father's good pleasure!" The love and pity of the tenderest earthly parent is but a dim shadow - compared to the pitying love of God.

If your heavenly Father's smile has for the moment been exchanged for the chastening rod - be assured there is some deep necessity for the altered discipline. If there are unutterable yearnings in the soul of the earthly parent as the lancet is applied to the wound of his child - infinitely more is it so with your covenant God, as He subjects you to these deep woundings of heart! Finite wisdom has no place in His ordinations. An earthly father may err - is ever erring; but, "as for God - His way is perfect!" This is the explanation of His every dealing: "Your heavenly Father knows you have need of all these things!"

Trust His heart - when you cannot trace His hand! Do not try to penetrate the cloud which "He brings over the earth," and to look through it. Keep your eye steadily fixed on the rainbow! The mystery is God's - the promise is yours. Seek that the end of all His dispensations may be to make you more confiding. Without one misgiving - commit your way to Him. He says regarding each child of His covenant family, what He said of Ephraim of old "I do earnestly remember him still." While now bending your head like a bulrush; your heart breaking with sorrow - remember His pitying eye is upon you. Be it yours, even through blinding tears to say, "Even so Father!" For He does not afflict willingly.

In our seasons of trial, when under some inscrutable painful dispensation, how apt is the murmuring thought to rise in our hearts, "All these things are against me! Might not this overwhelming blow have been spared? Might not this dark cloud, which has shadowed my heart and my home with sadness, have been averted? Might not the accompaniments of my trial have been less severe? Surely the Lord has forgotten to be gracious!"

No! These afflictions are errands of mercy in disguise! "He does not afflict willingly." There is nothing capricious or arbitrary about your God's dealings. Unutterable tenderness is the character of all His allotments! The world may wound by unkindness - trusted friends may become treacherous - a brother may speak with unnecessary harshness and severity; but the Lord is "abundant in goodness and in truth." He appoints no needless pang. When He appears, like Joseph, to "speak roughly" - there are gentle undertones of love. The stern accents are only assumed - because He has precious lessons that could not otherwise have been taught!

Ah! be assured that there is some deep necessity in that all He does. In our calendars of sorrow we may put this luminous mark against every trying hour, "It was needed!" Some excess branch in the tree required pruning. Some wheat required to be cast overboard to lighten the ship, and avert further disaster.

Mourning one! He might have dealt far otherwise with you! He might have cut you down as a fruitless, worthless cumberer! He might have abandoned you to drift, disowned and unpiloted on the rocks of destruction - joined to your idols! He might have "left you alone" to settle on your lees, and forfeit your eternal bliss! But He loved you better. It was kindness, infinite kindness - which blighted your fairest blossoms, and hedged up your way with thorns!

"Without this hedge of thorns," says Richard Baxter, "on the right hand and on the left - we would hardly be able to keep the way to heaven!"

~John R. McDuff~

(The End)