. God's ideal for His children,
J. R. Miller, the secret of gladness. Rejoice in the Lord always, I
will say it again, rejoice. Philippians 4, 4. For most of
us, it is not easy to be always joyful. Yet we should learn our
lessons so well that, whether amid circumstances of sorrow
or of gladness, our song shall never be interrupted. Joy is
God's ideal for His children. He means for them to be sunny-faced
and happy-hearted. He does not wish them to be heavy-hearted
and sad. He has made the world full of
beauty and full of music. The mission of the gospel is
to start songs wherever it goes. Its keynote is joy. Good tidings
of great joy to all people. We are commanded to rejoice always. This does not mean that the Christian's
life is exempt from trouble, pain, and sorrow. The gospel
does not give us a new set of conditions with the hard things
left out. The Christian's home is not sheltered
from life's storms any more than the worldly man's home is. Sickness
enters the circle where the voice of prayer is heard with its hot
breath, as well as the home where no heart adores and no knee bends
before God. In the holiest home's sanctuary,
the loving group gathers about the bed of death. and there is
sorrow of bereavement. Nor is grief less poignant in
the believer's case than in that of the man who knows not Christ. Grace does not make love less
tender, the pang of affliction less sharp, the sense of loss
less keen, or the feeling of loneliness less deep. God does
not give joy to His children by making them incapable of suffering. Divine grace makes the heart
all the more tender and the capacity for loving all the deeper. Hence, it increases rather than
lessens the measure of sorrow when afflictions come. But the
joy of the Christian is something which lies too deep to be disturbed
by the waves and tides of earthly trouble. It has its source in
the very heart of God. Sorrow is not prevented by grace,
but is swallowed up in the floods of heavenly joy. That was what
Jesus meant when He talked to His disciples of joy just as
He was about to go out to Gethsemane. He said their sorrow would be
turned into joy, and that they would have a joy which the world
could not take from them, that is, a joy which earth's deepest
darkness could not put out. God's joy is not the absence
of sorrow, but divine comfort overcoming sorrow, sunshine striking
through the black clouds transfiguring them. You will be sorrowful,
but your sorrow will be turned into joy. John 16, 20