Oswald Chambers- My Utmost for His Highest June 25

I have a friend who has lost herself in the sorrow of losing a child.  It is hard to watch.  I know what it is like to lose your moorings.  It is tough to breathe much less move forward.  But what Oswald Chambers has written is so true!  Sorrow has the potential to tenderize our hearts or harden them.  It is our choice.   I am thinking of Psalms 22:24 "For he has not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted,
    Neither has he hidden his face from him;  but when he cried to him, he heard."  That doesn't mean God will stop the pain.  Pain has purpose, like a mother who allows a doctor to stitch up her child's wound... God hears and understand our cries... and cares

Receiving Yourself in the Fires of Sorrow

…what shall I say? “Father, save Me from this hour”? But for this purpose I came to this hour. “Father, glorify Your name.” —John 12:27-28

As a saint of God, my attitude toward sorrow and difficulty should not be to ask that they be prevented, but to ask that God protect me so that I may remain what He created me to be, in spite of all my fires of sorrow. Our Lord received Himself, accepting His position and realizing His purpose, in the midst of the fire of sorrow. He was saved not from the hour, but out of the hour.

We say that there ought to be no sorrow, but there is sorrow, and we have to accept and receive ourselves in its fires. If we try to evade sorrow, refusing to deal with it, we are foolish. Sorrow is one of the biggest facts in life, and there is no use in saying it should not be. Sin, sorrow, and suffering are, and it is not for us to say that God has made a mistake in allowing them.

Sorrow removes a great deal of a person’s shallowness, but it does not always make that person better. Suffering either gives me to myself or it destroys me. You cannot find or receive yourself through success, because you lose your head over pride. And you cannot receive yourself through the monotony of your daily life, because you give in to complaining. The only way to find yourself is in the fires of sorrow. Why it should be this way is immaterial. The fact is that it is true in the Scriptures and in human experience. You can always recognize who has been through the fires of sorrow and received himself, and you know that you can go to him in your moment of trouble and find that he has plenty of time for you. But if a person has not been through the fires of sorrow, he is apt to be contemptuous, having no respect or time for you, only turning you away. If you will receive yourself in the fires of sorrow, God will make you nourishment for other people.