Our God Gives Songs In The Night
Oct. 21, 1999
"For God hath caused me to be fruitful in the land of my affliction" Gen. 41:52
"And the twelve gates were twelve pearls." Revelation 21:21. Dr. Edward T. Sullivan once took for his text: "every gate a pearl!" Every entrance into the heavenly life is through a pearl!
What is a pearl? A wound is made in a shell. A grain of sand, perhaps, gets imbedded in the wound; causing continual pain; relentless, bruising pain. In response to the pain, all the resources of repair are rushed to the source of the pain. Slowly and patiently, the oyster builds upon the grain of sand - layer upon layer of a milky substance that covers each sharp corner and coats every cutting edge and gradually....slowly....by and by a pearl, a thing of wondrous beauty is made. A PEARL IS A HEALED WOUND! NO WOUND, NO PEARL!"
He went on to show how, in our lives, misfortune can be transformed into blessing, hurts changed into pearls of precious value. Even a grievous handicap may become a lifesaving power. He tells a story of Nydia, the blind flower girl in the Last Days of Pompeii. She had not become bitter about her blindness; nor had she sulked or sat at home. She had gone about the business of living and had earned her livelihood as best as she could. Then came the awful day of the eruption of Vesuvius, with "The doomed city as dark as midnight beneath a thick pall of smoke and falling ashes; the terror-stricken inhabitants rush blindly to and fro, and lose themselves in the awful blackness." But Nydia does not get lost; because of her cross of blindness, she had learned to find her way by touch and hearing, and now she could go straight to rescue the life of the one she loved best. Bt learning to walk swiftly and surely in the dark, she had made of her handicap a treasure and a God-send in the dark hour.
"Every gate a pearl!" Every misfortune, every failure, every loss, may be transformed. God has the power to transform all "misfortunes" into God-sends. So Jesus transformed the cross from a criminal's badge of shame into the sign of the love of God. Often it takes a wound to transform a denying Peter into a fearless rock of a man. "No wound, no pearl!" -- out of life's buffetings may come our richest rewards.
WHETHER LIFE GRINDS DOWN A MAN, OR POLISHES HIM, DEPENDS ON WHAT HE IS MADE OF.
I have been through the valley of weeping,
The valley of sorrow and pain;
But the "God of all comfort" was with me,
At hand to uphold and sustain.
As the earth needs the clouds and the sunshine,
Our souls need both sorrow and joy;
So He places us oft in the furnace,
The dross from the gold to destroy.
So we'll follow wherever He leadeth,
Let the path be dreary or bright;
For we've proved that our God can give comfort,
Our God can give songs in the night.
- Selected from Consolation
