Joy Can Exceed the Sorrow

I visited with a friend who shared a heartache, a husband who could have been a continual sorrow. Did she want pity?

Indeed not! We read together Deuteronomy 8:8, 9: "For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land--a land with streams and pools of water...a land where bread will not be scarce and you will lack nothing; a land where the rocks are iron and you can dig copper out of the hills."

Despite the problem, in all those years of suffering, she declared with eyes shining, she had lacked nothing. We discussed those "iron rocks"--the challenges that would have made others stumble. For her, these rocks had been a source of strength.

Briefly her eyes filled with tears as she talked about her sorrow, the pain she had endured. But then she testified that the joy far exceeded the pain. She handed me a verse she had copied from a devotional that she had titled "My Song:"

Love divine has seen and counted,
Every tear it caused to fall;
And the storm which love appointed
Was the choicest gift of all.
--Anonymous

Jesus, what makes my life pleasant is not my circumstances but Your companionship in my circumstances.

"The Lord replied, 'My Presence will go with you, and I will give you rest'" (Exodus 33:14).