Is Sorrow Your Time of Revelation?

This morning I started reading the book of Job. Job is an amazing man in the fact that everything was taken away from him and yet, he refused to blame God for his situation, "He said, "Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked I shall return there. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord. Through all this Job did not sin nor did he blame God." Job 1:21-22. Even after his wife told him to "Curse God and die!" (vs. 2:9) Job still refused by saying, "Shall we indeed accept good from God and not accept adversity? In all this Job did not sin with his lips." Job 2:10b. My study notes say, "A key theme of the book: Trouble and suffering not merely punishment for sin; for God's people they may serve as a trial (as here) or as a discipline that culminates in spiritual gain."

My devotional today discussed the same thing:

Christ within makes an inner joy that all the darkness of earth's trials cannot quench. There are great diversities of experience in sorrow. Some when this world's lights are quenched and left in utter gloom, like a house without lamp or candle or flickering firelight when the sun goes down. Others, in similar darkness, stand radiant in the deep shadows: they have bright light within themselves. Christ dwells in them, and the beams from His blessed life turn night into day.

"It is in sorrow-darkened hearts where Christ truly dwells within. The light streaming from Him who is the Light of the World, in Whom is no darkness, illumines all the gloom of grief. Indeed, when Christ swells in the heart, sorrow is a blessing because it reveals beauties and joys which could not have been seen in the earthly light. It is one of the blessings fair of night, that without it we could never see the stars; it is on of the blessings of trial, that without it we could never see the precious comforts of God.

Were there no night, we could not read the stars,
The heavens would turn into blinding glare;
Freedom is best seen through prison bars,
And tough seas make the heaven passing fair;
We cannot measure joys but by their loss;
When blessing fade away, we see them then;
our richest clusters grow around the cross,
And in the night-time angels sing to men.

"When Christ is within us, sorrow is a time of revelation. It is like the cloud that crowned the summit of the holy mountain into which Moses climbed, and by which he as hidden so long from the eyes of this people. While folded in the clouds, he was looking upon God's face. Sorrow's cloud hides the world, and wraps the wondering one in thick darkness; but in the darkness, Christ Himself unveils the splendor and glory of His face. There are many who never saw the beauty of Christ, and never knew the intimacy of a personal friendship, till they saw Him , and learned to talk with Him as Friend with friend, in the hour of sorrow's darkness. When the lamps of earth when out, Christ's face appeared." - J. R. Miller (from Silent Times, 1886). - Streams in the Desert.

Krista Jones
6.1.08


Bible Reading:

Beginning to End: Exodus 4-6
Old and New Testaments Together: Genesis 46-48 & Matthew 13:1-30
Historical: Exodus 4-6
Chronological: Genesis 22-24
Blended: Genesis 46-48 & Romans 15:1-13

The Bible reading guides will be taken from Back to the Bible