After reading the following devotional several days ago, I marked the page to remind myself to use it for this particular milestone…

Sorrow is better than laughter; for by the sadness of the countenance the heart is made better (Ecclesiastes 7:3).

When sorrow comes under the power of divine grace, it works out a manifold ministry in our lives. Sorrow reveals unknown depths in the soul, and unknown capabilities of experience and service. [Happy-go-lucky], trifling people are always shallow, and never suspect the little meannesses in their nature. Sorrow is God’s plowshare that turns up and subsoils the depths of the soul, that it may yield richer harvests. If we had never fallen, or were in a glorified state, then the strong torrents of divine joy would be the normal force to open up all our souls’ capacities; but in a fallen world, sorrow, with despair taken out of it, is the chosen power to reveal ourselves to ourselves. Hence it is sorrow that makes us think deeply, long, and soberly.

Sorrow makes us go slower and more considerately, and introspect our motives and dispositions. It is sorrow that opens up within us the capacities of the heavenly life, and it is sorrow that makes us willing to launch our capacities on a boundless sea of service for God and our fellows.

[Often a soul lives on the outer edge of their own nature until some great thunderstorm of sorrow reveals hidden depths within that were never suspected.] It takes sorrow to widen the soul.

The dark brown mould’s upturned

By the sharp-pointed plow;

And I’ve a lesson learned.

My life is but a field,

Stretched out beneath God’s sky,

Some harvest rich to yield.

Where grows the golden grain?

Where faith? Where sympathy?

In a furrow cut by pain.    (Maltbie D. Babcock)

We can say, “Blessed is night for it reveals to us the stars…In the same way we can say, “Blessed is sorrow, for it reveals God’s comfort. H. C. Trumbull shares the following analogy: The floods washed away home and mill, all the poor man had in the world. But as he stood on the scene of his loss, after the water had subsided, brokenhearted and discouraged, he saw something shining in the bank which the waters had washed bare. “It looks like gold,” he said. It was gold. The flood which had beggared him made him rich.

As always, a daily dose of great wisdom from my Streams in the Desert 1 devotional book!

And on this fifth anniversary of my dear sister-in-law’s [bonus sister] homegoing it is a reminder of what God orchestrates in developing our character and renewed service for Him opposed to living a life centered on self.

Many posts have been written chronicling my bonus sister’s journey with cancer but the last entry after she breathed her last on this earth and woke up to the celestial air of heaven can be read here, Beggared or Refined!