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TOPIC: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks on Personal Problems (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 45. Compensations.
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Compensations.
Pain has great compensations. Its power to purify and refine is very great. It shakes loose, and sifts carefully out, the coarse and poor and bad. It weaves over the texture of one's life into a much finer fabric. The fire that burns also cleanses; the knife that hurts so is removing that which will hurt more seriously; the bitter draught from which we draw back so strongly has great tonic power. But the pain needs help to do its best work. There needs to be a looking steadily through the pain up to the great purpose of God, and on to the compensations, if it is to produce the finest results. To be made pure and fine is a full compensation for great pain.
Then there is the sympathy of Jesus. To use the word sympathy of Him in this way is to say that He knew pain. He knew it with a greater intimacy than any other human that has trodden the earth, for He was more keenly sensitive to it. Every pain that man has suffered Jesus suffered, except of course that coming through remorse or regret. Every pain that man knows was intensified in Jesus; the purity of His nature, the sinlessness of His life, the sensitiveness of His great spirit made Him more keenly alive to pain, and so made it the greater as experienced by Him.
But more than that, He went through the trying and maturing experiences of His life that so He might have a perfect sympathy with our humanity. He was made perfect in His humanity by the experiences He went through. Only so can a man learn. Jesus was perfectly human in going through human experiences. He did it purposely, with a great, strong purpose, that He might be one with us. So He becomes our keen, warm sympathizer.
He suffered pain that so He might help us in our suffering of pain. He can come near because He knows by touch what we know. There is marvelous compensation in this, the sympathy of such a one as Jesus.
A man who knows anything at all of the winsomeness and attractiveness of Jesus would be glad to go anywhere for the chance of getting closer to Him. He doesn't mind a rough road if in it the Master draws nearer; doesn't mind it! —he prefers it under such circumstances. The wild storm on the sea is welcomed if so you feel His arm tighter around you, and His presence more tenderly near, and His face almost seen by your outer eyes.
Jesus relieved suffering when down here long ago. He seemed to delight in relieving it. He would fairly wear Himself out in caring for men, though He had rare wisdom to avoid the bad extremes that we know so well. He seemed to forget His own needs as long as there was any needy body waiting a chance to be healed. Those great miracles of healing were not done to prove His divinity; they were done because He was divine; it was the love of divinity going out eagerly to His needy race of men. They did prove His divinity, incidentally; but were not done for that purpose, but to relieve men. So He reveals to us His feeling towards pain. He knows its sharp, cutting edge. He has power to remove it. He will remove it for us now if so the higher thing in mind can be reached too. He could, and would, remove it for more if there were more reaching up after the highest. When the pain remains, so does He. When it seems sharpest He comes nearest. And amid the tugging twinges His presence makes one sing joyously, though often with a tremor in the voice,—
"E'en though it be a cross
That raiseth me,
Still all my song shall be,
Nearer, my God, to Thee."
Then there is the compensation of being Jesus' messenger to others. Suffering qualifies us for ministering to those who suffer. Without doubt God permits some experiences to come to us that so He may use us to help others passing through just such experiences. I recall an English clergyman speaking of this at a conference in Boston. He had gone through a most trying experience. For days, he said, all was dark to him. He could not understand the way he was being led. At last light broke in through a particular passage of Scripture, and all cleared up. He preached on that passage the next Sabbath morning.
At the close of the service one of his members came up with eyes aglow, and surprise in her voice, and said, "How did you know what I have been passing through? " He said he didn't know. Then she explained that he had spoken of her identical experience, and through his message the light and peace had come anew to her. Others spoke in surprise of the same thing happening to them. Then he understood, and was grateful indeed to be God's messenger. And more than grateful, he was willing to go through any experience the Master might send if so he could better serve Him among his own fellows. Even so must God do in teaching men. We can tell to others only what we know personally. He can use in telling the truth only those who know it. Experience is equipment for service. Grief qualifies us to help those with like grief.
There is a right use of grief and a wrong, weak use of it. Its right use is to let it be a motive impelling us to help those who have had the same trying experience. Its wrong and weak use is to' let it remain simply an emotion draining our strength. In the midst of his great sorrow Tennyson wrote—
" Ring out the grief that saps the mind,
For those that here we see no more."
We should ring it out, and resolutely keep it out, as a mere emotion that saps and wears.
Activity in service is a help in bearing what comes. Pain has its temptations. One of them is the use of moral chloroform; the dulling of our sense of pain in a round of dissipation, or of distracting gayety. It only puts off the evil hour of feeling it more keenly than ever, with less of moral strength with which to bear it.
There are, too, some wondrous compensations in that keen pain of having the one who has been by your side, a bit of your very self, slip from your grasp, out of reach, into the other life. To have known love, to have loved and been loved, is to have known the sweetest and most lasting of all life's joys. It makes one the stronger and gentler. The love that has stood the test of time weaves the finest threads into the life web. To love is to live. The life is richer and deeper, finer and more fragrant, for the love that has come in, and that has been drawn out, even though for a time the one loved and loving has slipped from your side upwards.
Then there is the heritage of a memory that will grow in its fragrance and richness with the passing days. That is one of the cushions to ease the heart, for the bit of time in between now and the future meeting. And then we must not be forgetting that the loss is of companionship down here; all of that; yet only that. That is much, yet it is only for a while, that the old Book calls little, "how little! how little!" (Heb_10:37, literally, "for yet a little while—how little, how little, and He" etc.)
"A day and you will meet;
A night and you will greet." (Maltbie D. Babcock)
But when you miss present companionship, there is great joy in thinking over the wondrous companionship enjoyed by the one loved, and now gone. The companionship of Jesus now makes that face all alight with the radiance from His, while the marvelous music of the homeland fills ears and heart. Your loved one, side by side with the Master, thinks of you, and is quiet and glad for all the joy coming to you, and all the loving sovereignty of Jesus over your life. He is enjoying the fullness of life.
"This is the death of death,
To breathe away a breath,
And know the end of strife,
And taste the endless life.
And joy without a fear,
And smile without a tear,
And work, nor care, nor rest,
And find the last the best." (Maltbie D. Babcock)
And if it be the one of closest tie who has gone, a husband or wife, leaving a child in your care, there is more yet of sweet, hallowed compensation. It is the highest relation of life that yields the finest fragrance. For there is the fine fruit of your love, a precious new life, God's gift to you revealing and cementing earth's highest, human love. In your child, his or hers likewise who has gone, that loved one comes again to you, and abides ever with you. And yours is the unspeakable privilege of moulding into finest character this bit of your loved one's life left behind with you. This is a great compensation.
And so in the midst of greatest pain there may come the sweetest rest of spirit, because of these great compensations. And, more than all else, because of the presence of the greatest Sufferer and greatest Sympathizer as our closest Friend. Through Him is rest in pain of any sort.
"There is a rest that deeper grows
In midst of pain and strife;
A mighty conscious willed repose
In depth of deepest life.
To have and hold the precious prize
No need of jealous fear;
But windows open to the skies,
And skill to read the stars.
Who dwelleth in that secret place,
Where tumult enters not,
Is never cold with terror base,
Never with anger hot.
For if an evil past should dare
His very heart invest,
God is his deeper heart, and there
He enters into rest.
When mighty sea winds madly blow,
And tear the scattered waves,
Peaceful as summer woods below
Lie darkling ocean caves.
The wind of words may toss my heart,
But what is that to me!
'Tis but a surface storm—Thou art
My deep, still, resting sea." (George MacDonald)