The Lord is slow to anger but great in power; the Lord will
certainly not allow the wicked to go unpunished. He marches out in the
whirlwind and the raging storm; dark storm clouds billow like dust under
his feet. — Nah. 1:3 NET
by Henry Ward Beecher
I recollect, when a lad, and while attending a classical institute
in the vicinity of Mount Pleasant, sitting on an elevation of that
mountain, and watching a storm as it came up the valley. The heavens
were filled with blackness, and the earth was shaken by the voice of
thunder. It seemed as though that fair landscape was utterly changed,
and its beauty gone never to return.
But the storm swept on, and
passed out of the valley; and if I had sat in the same place on the
following day, and said, “Where is that terrible storm, with all its
terrible blackness?” the grass would have said, “Part of it is in me,”
and the daisy would have said, “Part of it is in me,” and the fruits and
flowers and everything that grows out of the ground would have said,
“Part of the storm is incandescent in me.”
Have you asked to be
made like your Lord? Have you longed for the fruit of the Spirit, and
have you prayed for sweetness and gentleness and love? Then fear not the
stormy tempest that is at this moment sweeping through your life. A
blessing is in the storm, and there will be the rich fruitage in the
“afterward.”
Selah.
The flowers live by the tears that fall
From the sad face of the skies;
And life would have no joys at all,
Were there no watery eyes.
Love thou thy sorrow: grief shall bring
Its own excuse in after years;
The rainbow!—see how fair a thing
God hath built up from tears.
— Henry S. Sutton
