God's Place For Adversity

 "What profit is it that we have walked mournfully before the Lord of hosts?" Malachi 3:14.

      There is no profit in walking mournfully. All the profit a man ever gets is from his joy. The advantage of the fires of sorrow does not lie in the things which they consume, but in the things which they cannot consume. The sweetest of all the uses of adversity is to show me the joy which it cannot take away. There is a substance which fire will not destroy; it is like the bush Moses saw in the wilderness. I could never have its quality proved except Thy fire. Yet the blessing is not the fire, but the unconsumedness. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego passed through the furnace and got no hurt. What was to them the benefit of the furnace? Precisely the limit of its power - what it could not do. Doubtless in things not vital there was damage done. The men were cast in bound and they came out loose; there was destruction to the environment. But it was not this that made the furnace beneficial. It was the untouched thing, the unsinged thing, the unharmed thing. The glory of the furnace was its failure. The glory of all sorrow, where it has glory, is its failure. I could not praise the setting of the sun if it did not bring out the beauty of the evening star.

       My soul, why deemest thou that thy grief is pleasing to thy Father! There is nothing pleasing to thy Father but thy joy. What He searches for in thy heart is not the pain, but the pearl. He longs to see the tenacity of thy joy - its inability to be extinguished. Why was Jesus His well-beloved? Because He was the man of sorrows? Nay; but because all His sorrows could not quench His joy. Hast thou not read that under the shadow of the cross He cried ''my peace I give unto you"? That peace, not the pain, was the Father's pearl. It was not the cloud of Jesus, but the bow in His cloud, that made His Father glad. So it is with thee, O my soul. Why does thy Father send thee the cloud? To test the immortality of thy joy, to prove whether the bow can abide in the flood, to see if the dove can live on the waters. Why bring Him the willow when He craves for the rose? Why send Him the cypress when He seeks for the laurel? Why offer Him the dirge when He asks for the song? He shades thy sun, not to see thy night, but to see thy candle - thy innermost source of joy. He appreciates thy bearing of grief because it is joy alone can bear. Thy fires to Him never become cleansing till He sees the gleam and glitter of the golden chain.