| The Joy of Service |
Chapter 14 |
Page 5 |
So it is ofttimes in the story of life. Out of our earthly defeats come our truest victories. Many a man brings from business reverses a new spirit, chastened, disciplined, with an eye for heavenly things. Many a woman comes from a sick room with a blessing of patience, gentleness, sympathy, thoughtfulness, which she had never worn before. Many persons come out of sorrow with a broken heart, and yet with a holy beauty, a Divine enrichment, a spiritual power, they had never possessed before. These are all brands or marks of Jesus. They seem to be woundings. They appear to our eyes to be scars – disfigurements, telling of hard usage. Yet they stand for spiritual qualities, pearls of character growing out of the woundings of the flesh, marks of growth, of new grace.
There is something very suggestive in the thought that it is the woundings and disfigurements of life that are the marks of Jesus. We remember that it was by His wounds, the prints of the nails, that Jesus Himself was known after His resurrection. May it not be, too, that we shall recognize Him in heaven by the same tokens? Every older Christian bears some marks of woundings. We are wounded in our conflicts with the enemy of our souls. The holiest saint ofttimes has had the hardest battles. Many people carry wounds in their heart – wounds made by sorrows.
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