I. To an Anxious Father
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I have thought about your daughter a great deal since you told me about her illness some weeks since. She has been often in my prayers that God would bless her, comfort and strengthen her — and if his will be so, to spare her life longer. You do not say anything about her condition — but I infer from what you write, that she is quite feeble. I shall write a little note to her today.
Let me thank you, however, for your very cordial words, and assure you of loving sympathy in your time of anxiety. God has led you and your family through valleys of shadow. But I know that he has never once failed to enlighten the valleys for you by his own loving presence. Those words in the Twenty-third Psalm, "Yes, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for you are with me," are applicable not only to the experience of dying — but quite as much to experience of sorrow in life. It has always been a comfort to me to think of that valley as it lay in the mind of the oriental shepherd. You know the reason he often led his sheep through these gloomy gorges. It was not because he wished to make the way hard for them or to give them anxiety and dread. The reason was that somewhere on the other side, he knew of a bit of green pasture to which he wished to lead his flock, in which they might lie down and on which they might feed. The only way, or at least the best way, to get to the pasture, was to pass through this dark gorge.
The meaning of this in our lives is very beautiful. God does not take us through glooms and shadows — to terrify us or to make the burden of the way heavier for us. There are sweet blessings to which he would lead us — but they lie over on the other side, and cannot be reached safely, but by going through these dark passages. Every time, therefore, the Lord leads us into any dark valley — we may be sure that he is taking us to something very sweet and beautiful on the other side. It has been so in your case. When you have passed through these shadowed ways — you have always come to new blessings, new joys, new comforts, which have compensated in a measure for the gloom and the shadow.
May God comfort you in this time of your anxiety.
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