God's Comfort in Sorrow
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Dear friend,
I cannot tell you how glad I am that my letter to you had its help and comfort in the time of your sorrow. My heart went out to you in very deep and sincere sympathy. It was my earnest prayer that God might comfort and strengthen you. I am glad to know that he has done so. Yet even the comfort of God does not take away the pain of sorrow, nor the pang of loss.
Sometimes people think that they have not been comforted, because they still feel as keenly as ever, the bereavement which took so much out of their life. It is not possible to comfort in this way. Sorrow is part of our life. God does not give back to us the loved ones for whom we mourn. Nor does he make our hearts less tender and sensitive. Indeed, the Christian is made even more tenderhearted by the love of Christ, and feels more keenly than the world's people feel the pain of sorrow.
The comfort which God gives, however, comes in the way of great and blessed truths which give a new aspect to our sorrows. There is the truth of immortality — that our saved loved ones who have gone from us — have gone into a larger life, a sweeter, truer, happier, more blessed life. Nothing is lost in death — nothing but the things which cumber our hearts. Love is not lost, memory is not lost, the beautiful things of character are not lost; these all stay in the heart and life of the loved one who passes out of our presence into the presence of God.
Another of God's comforts, is in the assurance of his own love. I suppose that one reason why sorrow comes to us, taking out of our life the things which are so dear to us — is, that we may love God more and see more beauty and grace in him. Still another comfort of God comes through the assurance that even sorrow brings blessings. Some day you will know what rich gifts came to you in the days of your deep grief. God sends many of his sweetest blessings to us in the time of our sorrow. He wraps up in its dark and forbidding form, the gentle things which make our lives richer, which make us stronger, braver, truer, and more Christlike.
One of the great blessings of sorrow is the preparation for ministering to others. One of the most remarkable words about sorrow is in one of Paul's Epistles, where he says that God comforts us — that we may comfort others with the comfort with which we ourselves have been comforted. Like all other things, comfort is not given to us for ourselves alone, but given that we may pass it on to others in their sorrow.
You have received God's comfort; now you are ordained by God to go into the world to be a comforter of others. Looking back upon your girlhood days, you see how many lessons you have learned, not only in college, with your books and teachers — but in your life of love as a wife and as a mother. Now God has set other lessons for you — lessons of pain and suffering. But they are still lessons meant to make you a stronger, truer, larger-hearted woman, and to fit you for serving others. You are now set apart to a ministry of comfort to other mothers.
I am sure that you have no intention of allowing your sorrow to hurt your own life. That is always the danger of sorrow, that in our grief and disappointment, we lose something of our zest for life, something of our interest in doing God's will.
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