The Ministry of the Night

Since my last post, about joy, I came across these words written by A.W. Tozer from his book The Incredible Christian. It may or may not interest you, but the words comforted me because they confirmed some of the things God is teaching me.

"...There is a limit to man's ability to live without joy. Even Christ could endure the cross only because of the joy set before Him. The strongest steel breaks if kept too long under unrelieved tension. God knows exactly how much pressure each one of us can take. He knows how long we can endure the night, so He gives the soul relief, first by welcoming glimpses of the morning star and then by the fuller light that harbingers the morning.

"Slowly you will discover God's love in your suffering. Your heart will begin to approve the whole thing. You will learn from yourself what all the schools in the world could not teach you—the healing action of faith without supporting pleasure. You will feel and understand the ministry of the night; its power to purify, to detach, to humble, to destroy the fear of death and, what is more important to you at the moment, the fear of life. And you will learn that sometimes pain can do what even joy cannot, such as exposing the vanity of earth's trifles and filling your heart with a longing for the peace of heaven."

I especially love the point about slowly discovering God's love in suffering, and learning that sometimes pain can do what joy cannot. It puts into concise wording what I know from experience, but had a difficult time finding the right way to put it.