O Samaria, My Samaria!
We each have ‘Samarias’ in our hearts where there are found secrets, fears, follies, rejections, and hurts..and, just as the Savior does for this poor misfit and outcast in John 4, He will also make an intentional visit to such places in my life, to set me free of them.
He has love enough to overcome the exiled places in me.
Today, on the Pasture’s Podcast…
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Being called to a life of ‘abnormal’ suffering has taught me a few things. For one, my rear-view perspective tends to run rose-hued, as I harbor a near-romantic blush, a satisfying kinship, with past seasons in the Refiner’s Fire.
Mr. Spurgeon, no stranger to dark days himself (he suffered lifelong bouts with depression), wrote and spoke often on the nature of suffering’s grander good.
Take this, for example. Here, he adds an epistolary of hope to the chronicles of the suffering Church and hits the proverbial nail square with typical eloquence and heart:
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“I bear my witness that the worst days I have ever had have turned out to be my best days. And when God has seemed most cruel to me he has then been most kind. If there is anything in this world for which I would bless him more than for anything else it is for pain and affliction. I am sure that in these things the richest tenderest love has been manifested to me.
Our Father’s wagons rumble most heavily when they are bringing us the richest freight of the bullion of his grace. Love letters from heaven are often sent in black-edged envelopes. The cloud that is black with horror is big with mercy.
Fear not the storm. It brings healing in its wings and when Jesus is with you in the vessel the tempest only hastens the ship to its desired haven.”
– Charles H. Spurgeon
How about you, friend? Do you bear witness to these things also?
Have you seen Pretty Woman? You know, Richard Gere and a younger Julia Roberts. Perhaps the movie that made her a star and resurrected Gere’s career?
You remember.
But I’ve got a story on today’s Pasture’s Podcast that is even more stunning than Pretty Woman. It’s more romantic because it’s true, not a fabrication – and even more hard to believe.
It’s Hosea’s story…
Running Time: 26m, 52s
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