A Basket of Barley Loaves

by Mary Christina Miller

V.
The Chastening.

My meditation of him shall be sweet when I consider his chastenings, for "blessed is the man whom thou chastenest, O Lord."

Of all the beatitudes this may appear to be the strangest. To the young disciple chastisements may seem anything but happiness; you see in them no beauty that you should desire them. If you have never been taught in the school of affliction, you cannot understand this; neither can you understand it if you have not learned well what you were there taught. Perhaps you have been greatly afflicted, and yet you can see no good fruits of it in your soul. Every disappointment has only increased bitter feelings in your heart. You are conscious of this. You are ready to say, "Where are the blessed effects of sorrow?" The Master comes "seeking fruit," and findeth none. Why is this? We reply, that sorrow in itself has no sanctifying power. Many are hardened by it, and rendered more unlovely and unholy. But the plane in the hand of the carpenter's Son cannot fail to make you better, and if you are not profited by it, it is because you do not rightly receive your sorrows.

While you were a stranger to the love of Christ you had no special consolation to sustain you in the time of trial. The consolations of God, which are neither few nor small, you had no right to appropriate. With every stroke of the rod you seemed to hear a terrible voice saying, "I, even I, will chastise you seven times for your sins." But now that you are reconciled to God, all is changed; you hear another voice saying, "As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten."

Henceforth, therefore, you may accept trials as love-tokens, for "whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth."

Perhaps, like Jonah, you have been sitting with great delight under the shadow of your gourd. To give you joy and comfort in the desert, God caused it to spring up. You felt glad and even thankful because of its pleasant shade, and while you rested under its shadow songs of praise ascended to the Giver. Yet "God prepared a worm." You woke one morning to find your beautiful gourd all withered. Never did the desert seem more dreary. You fainted under God's smiting, and with aching and rebellious heart you prayed for death. There seemed to be nothing for which to live, and you said, "It is better for me to die than to live."

"Doest thou well to be angry for the gourd?"

There are times when God shows his mercy to us by turning a deaf ear to our foolish prayer. No, I should not say he turneth a deaf ear to our prayer. He does hear, and he does answer, but not according to our asking. You asked death; he sent grace to live. "It is better for me to die," you said. God, by sparing your life, said most plainly, "It is better for you to live." God knows best.

If you are still mourning over your smitten gourd, permit us to give you some reasons why you should no longer mourn, or, at least, why you should not murmur.