Perspective in Trials
A dear friend, who also has lost a precious baby, sent the following email to Dave a few days ago. It has so served me soul:
Dave,
I read this entry in the gospel primer this morning and it deeply affected me and I pray it would have a similar effect on your soul brother.
Perspective in Trials
More than anything else I could ever do, the gospel enables me to embrace my tribulations and thereby position myself to gain full benefit from them. For the gospel is the one great permanent circumstance in which I live and move; and every hardship in my life is allowed by God only because it serves His gospel purposes in me. When I view my circumstances in this light, I realize that the gospel is not just one piece of good news that fits into my life somewhere among all the bad. I realize instead that the gospel makes genuinely good news out of every others aspect of my life, including my severest trials. The good news about my trials is that God is forcing them to bow to His gospel purposes and do good unto me by improving my character and making me more conformed to the image of Christ.
Preaching the gospel to myself each day provides a lens through which I can view my trials in this way and see the true cause for rejoicing that exists in them. I can then embrace trials as friends and allow them to do God’s good work in me.
Today I pray that you would be helped to “forget not all of his benefits” and “be strengthened by the grace of God.” Do not lose heart Dave for this “momentary affliction is preparing for you a weight of eternal glory.” And when you arrive on heavens shore I am sure that your precious Alivia will be the first to greet you after Christ, and she will teach you of the glories of heaven that she has known. For you and I now have glory babies who are safe in the arms of Jesus and have joined that “great cloud of witnesses” that we long to be in. For to us, to live is Christ and to die is GAIN!
You and your precious bride are not alone! We grieve with you and stand by your side in this.
How precious is the blood of Christ that has ransomed our precious little ones away! Surely he has born our grief and carried our sorrows and it is by his stripes that we are healed!
Dreaming of heaven with you.
