Some of the saddest cries that wail out in the Psalms are sighings for the joy of the divine presence temporarily lost. And when we come to think of it, there is no other loss in all the range of possible losses that is so great as the breaking of our communion with god. This is not the ordinary estimate. We speak with heavy heart of our earthly sorrows. When bereavements come, and our homes are emptied and our tender joys borne away, we think there is not grief like ours. Our lives are darkened and very dreary does this earth appear to us as we walk its paths in deep loneliness. Then there are other losses, — losses of friends by alienation; losses of property, of comforts, of health, of reputation.
But there is not one of all these that is such a calamity as the loss of God’s smile, the hiding of his face, or the interruption of our fellowship with him. Men sigh over their misfortunes which touch only their earthly circumstances, and forget that there is no misfortune like the decay of spirituality in their hearts. It would be well if all of us understood this. There are earthly misfortunes under which hearts remain all the while warm and tender, like the flower-roots beneath the winter’s snows, ready to burst into glorious bloom when the springtime comes. And there are worldly prosperities under which spiritual life withers and dies.
We do not know what God is to us until, in some way; we lose the sense of his presence and the consciousness of his love. This is true of all our blessings. We do not know their value to us till they are lost or imperiled. We do not prize health till it is shattered and broken, and we can never have it restored again. We do not recognize the richness and splendour of youth till it has fled, with all its glorious opportunities, and worlds cannot buy it back. We do not appreciate the comforts and blessings of Providence till we have been deprived of them, and are driven out of warm homes into the cold paths of a dreary world. We do not estimate the value of our facilities for education and improvement, till the period of these opportunities is gone, and we must enter the hard battle of life unfurnished and unequipped. We do not know how much our friends are to us till they lie before us silent and cold. Ofttimes the vacant chair, or the deep, unbroken loneliness about us, is the first revealer of the worth of one we have never duly prized.
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