Meditation Moments 125: "'AFTERWARD' -- HEBREWS 12:11"
"Does Jesus care when my heart is pained
Too deeply for mirth and song,
As the burdens press and the cares distress,
And the way grows weary and long.
"Oh, yes He cares, I know He cares,
His heart is touched with my grief.
When the days are weary, the long nights dreary,
I know my Savior cares."
There are so many burdened hearts and sorrowful lives going through great trial. One says that though they have called out to the Lord, He doesn't seem to hear their prayer. -- The testing is so great, and they can't seem to get through. Another one wonders why God has allowed certain things to come to pass in their life.
A woman's son had been killed in a plane crash, and he was all she had -- the joy of her life and on whom all her life's hopes were built upon, as she had educated him so splendidly.
A couple who had waited so long for a baby were granted the child at long last, yet it was born a Mongoloid. And there's a young woman who was just about to graduate from the university who, on her way to deliver the baccalaureate, was paralyzed from the neck down in a car crash, leaving her grieving mother confused, saying, "I've cried from the depths of my heart, and I just don't understand."
Here is something that Mrs. Cowman wrote, who is the woman who wrote, "Streams in the Desert." It's a very well-known book, one of her best sellers, and it's gone all over the World and sold some million copies. She said that one time when she felt seemingly forsaken of God, that it was as if she was walking in a desert waste, comfort and healing reached her own broken heart through hearing about a vision that was given to a friend of hers, to whom God had spoken in her hour of deepest need.
Mrs. Cowman said that her friend had been praying for friends in trouble, when the Lord said to her, "Come with Me, I wish to show you something. I have been setting aside the reward of your faithful service to Me." So she drew nearer to Him and saw that He had before Him one special prize, and there were no words to adequately describe its dazzling beauty. He called it "a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory." -- 2Cor.4:17. As He looked upon it with such satisfaction, He said,
"This is one of my best gifts, one of My rarest. It can only be bestowed upon one who has been sorely tested. This is for you. I prepared it especially for you, but you are not prepared for it, and you must never see it as it is, never fully on Earth. -- Perhaps not even a glimpse of it. In this will lie the severest part of your testing, the greatest part of your preparation. I must disguise the glory that's in store, that you may learn to walk by faith and not by sight; to serve for love only, and not for reward."
Then he took a piece of plain coarse sacking and in it He carefully wrapped the treasure, tying it securely with a thick strong cord. So many, so tight and so intricate were the knots that no human ingenuity could ever succeed in untying them. Then He said, "Take it up." It was so heavy, she could only lay it down with a sigh, saying, "Surely this burden is greater than I can bear." His answer was,
"I have carefully tested its weight, and My grace is sufficient, and My strength is made perfect in weakness." -- 2Cor.12:9. Then He called her by name, and she came to Him, and He said, "I have a work I want you to do for me, are you ready?" She replied, "Oh yes! I've been longing for some special service, and shall be so glad, Lord. What would you have me do?"
He put the burden upon her. Utterly unattractive in its plainness and ugliness, He handed it to her, and said in a tone of infinite tenderness, "This is My love gift to you, My special love test. There are only a few that I can trust with it. I want you to carry it everywhere you go for My sake, and when I call you to bring it to me, we'll open it together, and you'll see what I have prepared for one who trusted Me.
"'Til then you must not lay it down. Will you do this for me?" She answered, "Yes." She took up the burden with difficulty. "Oh," she said, "I thought He was going to let me work for Him, but it's all burden. How can I go on day after day dragging this weight with me, how long?
And He said, "Fear not, I am with thee, I will help thee, I'll deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify Me." Then the final day came, the day of explanation about this heavy burden she was carrying. She brought her burden and lay it before the Lord with such a look of relief -- the burden-bearing days were over. He took the burden from her as she watched and saw that with one touch of His hand, all the knots were untied and the wrappings fell off. The riches of glory prepared for her stood all revealed before her astonished gaze.
"This is your eternal portion which I had prepared for you. -- My gift to you in appreciation for what you have been and done and suffered for Me." There was a delightful amazement on her face. Tears were in her eyes. She fell at His feet and said, "Oh Lord, forgive me that I have misunderstood that burden. If I had only trusted Thee, and not doubted and questioned. If only I had believed that it was all glory, if I could only have seen.
"But I saw only the ugly wrappings and the knotty cord. I couldn't see beyond. It was such a heavy weight, and I was not able to count it joy. I fretted over it, I did not trust, I did not walk by faith, because I could not see. I couldn't understand why you put such a heavy burden upon me.
The Lord wiped the tears from her face, then made her sit beside Him with the glory in full view, for all Worlds even to see. She asked Him, "If this the outcome of all those days of faith without any sight? And He replied softly, "The trial of thy faith has been much more precious than gold that perisheth, though it has been tried by fire." -- 1Pet.1:7.
May it be that way with you in your burden, that "afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness." -- Heb.12:11
Copyright (c) 1998 by The Family -- This file has not been proofread.