God weighs and measures, bounds
and ordains my sorrows by Alexander Smiley from The Secret Place
1907 Our light affliction, which is
but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and
eternal weight of glory. While we do not look at the things
which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things
which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not
seen are eternal. 2 Corinthians 4 17-18 It is good to know that there
is a limit to affliction. It is but for a moment. It has
its appointed end. Not always will the war go on. Not always will the seas be tempest-driven. Not always will the rains descend
and the fierce winds blow. God weighs and measures, bounds
and ordains my sorrows. For seven months Adolf Monod
lay in helpless suffering. Week by week his pain increased
in its severity, until he had not a minute when he was free
from it. But this is what he wrote. The
desert in the morning, Gethsemane in the afternoon, Golgotha in
the evening. Well, the desert with Christ,
Gethsemane with Christ, Golgotha with Christ, this is better than
all the pleasures of sin. And of these painful mornings
and afternoons and evenings, God has fixed and foreordained
an end. It is good to know that there
is a purpose in affliction. It works for me, in my service,
on my behalf. Affliction does not rise out
of the ground, nor fall on me by chance, as an unfortunate,
aimless, undirected, capricious thing. Job 5, 6, 1, 21. Affliction is the instrument
and agent of my Father in heaven. By it He would teach my mind,
soften and expand my heart, give new robustness to my faith, add
vigour to my prayers, fructify all my graces and character. There is a touching incident
of Mr. Wadrow. He was much affected with his
worthy son's death, it being somewhat sudden and surprising.
Yet he behaved very christically under that sharp affliction.
He went down to the place where his son's corpse was. He stayed
some time. They inquired what he had been
doing there. I was, says he, thanking God
for thirty-one years' loan of my dear son. These are the flowers
of submission, of patience, of trust, which grow in the clefts
of a breaking heart. It is good to know that there
is a coronation after affliction. It is the prelude to an eternal
weight of glory, and the glory will be none the less, but all
the more, because it has been heralded by the grief. I am fitted
for the purity of the glorious inheritance by the cleansing
and refining discipline to which I am subjected on the way to
it. I welcome its sunshine and rest,
because I have been out in the midnight when the fierce gales
were abroad. There are notes and chords in
my everlasting song which never could have been there if I had
not discovered in my afflictions the grace of the Father and the
sympathy of the Son and the comforts of the Holy Spirit. I consider
that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the
glory that will be revealed in us. Romans chapter 8 verse 18 you