THE JOYFUL TRANSFORMATION
by John MacDuff - 1800s
"Remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how He said" —
"Your sorrow shall be turned into joy." — John 16:20
Christ's people are a sorrowing people! Chastisement is their badge — "great tribulation" is their appointed discipline. When they enter the gates of glory, He is represented as wiping away tears from their eyes. But, weeping ones, be comforted! Your Lord's special mission to earth — the great errand He came from heaven to fulfill, was "to bind up the brokenhearted." Your trials are meted out by a tender hand. He knows you too well — He loves you too well — to make this world tearless and sorrowless! "There must be rain, and hail, and storm," says Rutherford, "in the saint's cloud." Were your earthly course strewed with flowers, and nothing but sunbeams played around your dwelling, it would lead you to forget your nomadic life — that you are but a sojourner here. The tent must at times be struck, pin by pin of the moveable tabernacle taken down, to enable you to say and to feel in the spirit of a pilgrim, "I desire a better country." Meantime, while sorrow is your portion, think of Him who says, "I know your sorrows." Angels cannot say so — they cannot sympathize with you, for trial is a strange word to them. But there is a mightier than they who can. All He sends you and appoints you is in love. There is a provision and condition wrapped up in the bosom of every affliction — "if need be;" coming from His hand, sorrows and riches are to His people equivalent terms. If tempted to murmur at their trials they are often murmuring at disguised mercies. "Why do you ask me," said Simeon, on his deathbed, "what I like? I am the Lord's patient — I cannot but like everything."
And then — "your sorrow shall be turned into joy." "The morning comes" — that bright morning when the dew-drops collected during earth's night of weeping shall sparkle in its beams; when in one blessed moment a lifelong experience of trial will be effaced and forgotten, or remembered only by contrast, to enhance the fullness of the joys of immortality. What a revelation of gladness! The map of time disclosed, and every little streamlet of sorrow, every river will be seen to have been flowing heavenwards — every rough blast to have been sending the ship nearer the haven! In that joy, God Himself will participate. In the last "words of Jesus" to His people when they are standing by the triumphal archway of Glory, ready to enter on their thrones and crowns, He speaks of their joy as if it were all His own. "Enter into the joy of your Lord."
Reader, may this joy be yours! Sit loose to the world's joys. Have a feeling of chastened gratitude and thankfulness when you have them; but beware of resting in them, or investing them with a permanency they cannot have. Jesus had his eye on heaven when He added —
"Your joy no man takes from you."
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