Comfort for the Bereaved from
Thoughts of God by John McDuff 1864 How precious are your thoughts
unto me, O God! I have seen His ways and will
heal Him I will lead him also and restore comforts unto him
and to his mourners. Isaiah 57 18 We have here the
utterance of God's thoughts to the bereft mourner. He who looked
down of old on bonded Israel and thus unlocked the thoughts
of his heart. I know their sorrows. He who,
in a later age, watched from the mountainside the frail bark
tossed in the midst of the lake, and hastened to the rescue of
faithless disciples, says to each poor afflicted one, My thoughts
are upon you. I have appointed your trial.
I have decreed that early or that unlooked-for grave. Let
faith trust me in this dark hour, when fainting human nature may
fail to comprehend the mystery of my dealings. The successive
clauses of this verse form a beautiful gradation. God sees, he heals,
he leads, he comforts. God sees, he knows all my case,
my character, my circumstances. He alone can judge as to the
needs be of trial. He has some wise reason for his
discipline. God heals. He comes with the
balm of his own heavenly consolation. When the wave of sorrow has answered
the end for which it was sent, he says, Thus far shall you go,
and no farther. God leads. He does not inflict
the heavy blow and then forsake. He does not leave the shorn lamb
to the untempered winds of trial. The Lord shall guide you continually
and satisfy your soul in drought, with guidance and provision,
the two pilgrim necessities, and that too, in drought, when
the world's provisions fail. God comforts. The mother's love
for her child is manifested not at the moment only when it receives
some severe injury, but in the subsequent nights of patient,
tender care and unwearying watchfulness. As one whom his mother comforts,
so, says God, will I comfort you. In the hour of sorrowing
bereavement, Many a precious revelation is made of a before
unknown or hidden God. In wrestling like Jacob with
the covenant angel, the soul is often brought to feel for
the first time in that struggle hour his touch. The consciousness
of a presence before dimly recognized is now felt. Like Israel, we
may go halting to our graves, but the place of affliction is
called by us to the last, the Nile. For there, we saw God face
to face, and from that hour, we have journeyed on, sorrowful
yet always rejoicing. Let us cleave to this thought
of sustaining comfort. Other thoughts of other hearts
may have perished. Others that used to think of
us, and to interchange thoughts with us, may now only greet us
with mute smiles from their portraits on the wall. The parents' arms
that comforted us may be moldering in the dust. The brook that once
sang along its joyous music may be silent and still. We gaze
upon a dry and waterless channel. But Jehoah lives. Towards a mourner
there is one heart, ever throbbing with thoughts of unalterable
love. Weeping one, you can say, in
the mist even of the intensest loneliness and through anguished
tears. As for me, I am poor and needy. But you, my God, are thinking
about me right now. You are my helper and my savior. Do not delay. Oh my God.