Comforting Grace

"I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you." (John 14:18)

Blessed Jesus! How Your presence sanctifies trial; takes loneliness from the chamber of sickness; and the sting from the chamber of death! Bright and Morning Star! Precious at all times, You are never so precious as in "the dark and cloudy day!" The bitterness of sorrow is well worth enduring — to have Your promised consolations.

How well qualified, Man of Sorrows, are You to be my Comforter! How well fitted to dry my tears — You who shed so many Yourself! What are my tears — my sorrows — my crosses — my losses, compared with Yours, who shed first Your tears, and then Your blood for me! Mine are all deserved, and infinitely less than I deserve. How different, O Spotless Lamb of God — those pangs which rent Your guiltless bosom!

How sweet those comforts which You have promised to the comfortless, when I think of them as flowing from an Almighty Fellow Sufferer, "A brother born for adversity" — the "Friend that sticks closer than any brother!" — one who can say, with all the refined sympathies of a holy exalted human nature, "I know your sorrows!"

My soul! calm your griefs! There is not a sorrow you can experience but Jesus, in His treasury of grace — has an exact corresponding solace: "In the multitude of the sorrows I have in my heart — Your comforts delight my soul!" (Psalm 94,19).

J.M.D.

Article series: Grace