Merely to mark time in missionary work during the war is a fatal blunder.
We must go forward. Let the call of Christ be heard and heeded through
the din of the world’s conflict, and let the Church rise to a worthy
endeavor to accomplish speedily the work entrusted to her.
Rowland Bingham (1872-1942)
We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers,
about the hardships we suffered in the province
of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond
our ability to endure,so that we despaired even
of life. Indeed, in our hearts we felt the sentence
of death. But this happened that we might not rely on
ourselves but on God, who raises the dead.
2 Corinthians 1:8,9
The pressure of hard places makes us value life. Every time our life
is given back to us from such a trial, it is like a new beginning,
and we learn better how much it is worth, and make more of it for God
and man. The pressure helps us to understand the trials of others, and
fits us to help and sympathize with them…
Trials and hard places are needed to press us forward, even as the furnace
fires in the hold of that mighty ship give force that moves the piston,drives
the engine, and propels that great vessel across the sea in the face of
the winds and waves.
-A.B. Simpson (1843-1919)
“Out of the presses of pain,
Cometh the soul’s best wine;
And the eyes that
have shed no rain,
Can shed but little shine.”
Streams in the Desert Volume One – May 18
by Mrs. Charles E. Cowman
It is nor for us who are passengers, to meddle with the chart
and with the compass.
Let that all- skilled Pilot alone with
His own work. – Hall
“Some things cannot be done in a day. God does not make a
sunset glory in a moment, but for days may be massing the
mist out of which He builds His palaces beautiful in the west.”
Selected
Some glorious morn–but when? Ah, who shall say?
The steepest mountain will become a plain, And the parched
land be satisfied with rain. The gates of brass all broken;
iron bars, Transfigured, form a ladder to the stars.
Rough places plain, and crooked ways all straight, For him
who with a patient heart can wait. These things shall be on
God’s appointed day: It may not be tomorrow–yet it may.
Streams in the Desert Volume 1 May 24th
by
Mrs. Charles E. Cowman
Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary of Magdala went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance. So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved, and said, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him!”
So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb. Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in. Then Simon Peter, who was behind him, arrived and went into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, as well as the burial cloth that had been around Jesus’ head.
The cloth was folded up by itself, separate from the linen. Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed. John 20:1-8
and it is not the rock which ebbs and flows but your sea.
