| Please share these healing words for the nation, from
the Bible and from the book "A Larger Christian Life" by A.B. Simpson:
"'Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound' --the
holy Bible, book of Romans, chapter 5, verse 20
We find in nature a beautiful approximation
to the truth declared in this verse, a sort of parable and symbol of
the glory of redemption. It is this.
Go into the woods and cut a wound in the side
of a living tree, and then go back again a few years later and see how
the tree has endeavored to heal its wound and restore the breach by a very
beautiful reproductive force. The notch in the trunk is all grown up
again. Not, however, with the old fibres, but with far stronger materials;
and you will find the grain of
the wood interlaced and twisted across the old
fibres in a sort of tangle, which all of your efforts would frequently
be found unable to cleave asunder. In fact, the healed breach is
much stronger than any other part of the tree, and nature has not only
made good the loss, but far more abundantly brought good out of it.
So, it is said, a broken bone heals
much more strongly than the natural bone, as though nature were determined
to fortify herself against a second attack, and to turn to account,
in double strength, the assault made upon her.
Very beautifully is this illustrated
in the formation of the pearl. A little grain of sand or a piercing
thorn in the sensitive side of the pearl oyster, irritating its nerves,
provokes him, not to retaliate and thus inflict upon himself a greater
wound, but to throw around theintruding element a crystalline liquid
and bury it out of sight in a smooth and beautiful gem;
so that out of the thorn and the wound come beauty
and victory, and the value of the little
mollusk is enhanced a thousand-fold by the very
incident that threatened his destruction."
As Joseph said in the book of Genesis, about
the damage his brothers had inflicted upon him, which led to his becoming
king and saving the nation: "You meant this for evil, but God used
it for good."
God will cause this great evil to somehow work
for a much greater and higher good! Of this we can be sure. In
God we trust.
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