But GOD Meant It For Good!

Gen 50:20  But as for you, ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive.

God's deeper meanings - We are apt to see a malicious meaning; are we equally apt to detect the Divine and benevolent one? 

Our enemies are many, and they hate us with perfect hatred; they are ever laying their plots, and working their unholy purposes. 

BUT there is a greater and wiser than they, who, through all these plottings, is prosecuting His Divine purpose. 

There is Another and Deeper meaning than appears to the short sight of sense.

Let us believe that there is a Divine and deeper meaning in the adversities of our lives.

Joseph might be forgiven for not doing so; but with his history and that of many others before us, we have no excuse for despair in the face of crushing sorrow. 

Whether it comes from man or devil, all creatures are under the Divine control, holding to our lips cups which the Father's hand has mixed. 

He has no complicity with their evil, but they unconsciously perform His will. 

Even if you cannot see the Divine meaning, Dare To Believe that it is there.

Await the disclosures of time.

Even here we sometimes reach an height from which we detect the meaning of the path by which we have been conducted. 

It may have been rough and winding, but there was reason in it all. 

Often God rewards patient trust by allowing us to see and know.

And for the full revelation of eternity.

One day God will call us to His side in the clear light of eternity...

And will explain His meanings in life's most sorrowful experiences...

And we shall learn that we suffered, not for ourselves only, but for others...

And, as part of His great remedial scheme, "to save much people alive."

~F. B. Meyer

Rejoicing In Darkness

                                                
Psa 66:6  He turned the sea into dry land: they went through the flood on foot: there did we rejoice in him.

It is a striking statement, "through the floods" (the place where we might have expected nothing but trembling and terror, anguish and dismay) "there," says the Psalmist, "did we rejoice in him!"

How many there are who can endorse this as their experience:

That "there," in their very seasons of distress and sadness, they have been enabled, as they never did before, to triumph and rejoice.

How near their God in covenant is brought!

How brightly shine His promises!

In the day of our prosperity we cannot see the brilliancy of these.

Like the sun at noon, hiding out the stars from sight, they are indiscernible;

But when night overtakes, the deep, dark night of sorrow, out come these clustering stars-blessed constellations of Bible hope and promise of consolation.

Like Jacob at Jabbok, it is when our earthly sun goes down that the Divine Angel comes forth, and we wrestle with Him and prevail.

It was at night, "in the evening," Aaron lit the sanctuary lamps.

It is in the night of trouble the brightest lamps of the believer are often kindled.

It was in his loneliness and exile John had the glorious vision of his Redeemer.

There is many a Patmos still in the world, whose brightest remembrances are those of God's presence and upholding grace and love in solitude and sadness.

How many pilgrims, still passing through these Red Seas and Jordans of earthly affliction, will be enabled in the retrospect of eternity to say with full memories of God's great goodness...

We went through the flood on foot, there-there, in these dark experiences, with the surging waves on every side, deep calling to deep...

Jordan, as when Israel crossed it, in 'the time of the overflowing' (flood), yet, 'there did we rejoice in Him!

~Dr. Macduff

Hos 2:15  And I will give her her vineyards from thence, and the valley of Achor for a door of hope: and she shall sing there, as in the days of her youth, and as in the day when she came up out of the land of Egypt.