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When our path is strewed with roses
(The Christian Monitor)
Many and precious are the benefits arising from affliction.
Affliction tends to wean us from this world, and enable us
rightly to appreciate its fading enjoyments. When our
path
is strewed with roses, when nothing but brightness and
fragrance float around us, how apt we are to be enamored
with our present condition, and to forget the crown of glory
at the end of the Christian's race, and to forget Jesus, and
everlasting ages.
But affliction, with a warning voice, rouses us from the
sweet delusion; warns our hearts to "arise and depart"
from these inferior delights, because this is "not our rest,"
--that true and lasting joys are not to be found here.
The sweeping tempest and the beating surge teach
the mariner to prize the haven, where undisturbed
repose awaits his arrival. In like manner . . .
disappointments,
vexations,
anxieties, and
crosses,
teach us to long for those happy mansions, where
"God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and
there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor
crying, neither shall there be any more pain. For the
old world and its evils are gone forever!" Rev. 21:4
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