The progressive farmer. [volume] (Winston, N.C.) 1886-1904, 1902-04-22
Christian Life Column,
UNEXPECTED BLESSINGS.

~ NON "a H@mGu AAN4GS
out. His providences are oftentimes
~inexplicable and his leadings seem to
bring US into untoward conditions,
yet there are unexpected blessings
born of seemingly unpropitious cir
cumstances. The riddle that Sam
son proposed to the young men of
Timnath, "Out of the eater came
forth meat, and out of the strong
came forth sweetness" suggests a
deeper and profounder thought than
that out of the caroa of the lion
Samson had secured honey to eat.
It is also the riddle of human ex
perience and finds it's Interpretation
in the unfolding of life itself. We
have come TO understand that that
which has seemed the most destruc-
tive in the worlds history and in
human experiences has been pro-
duotive of benediotion and that which
has appeared only as disastrous has
prepared the way for blessing. Sin
entered into the world and became
such a stencil before God that the
world must be destroyed. The deluge
swept all living things before it and
left only a world waste, but "out of
the eater game forth meat" and the
earth's rich treasure-houaes were
fashioned by the washing of the
waters, and the treasures themselves
hidden away in their secret vaults.
The lightning flashes across the
heavens and brings conhagration
and death. An inexplioable agent of
i'll, "but out of the strong there came
forth sweetness" when the light
ning's flash was ~harnessed, and the
messages began TO sound through
the oceans depths in the telegraph
cable, and our friends voices oame
to us as though in weird delusion as
we sat by our own fresides with the
newly invented telephone.
Our first parents -transgressed
Gods law, and wretchedness and
misery, sickness and death, became
the fruits thereof. Why God per-
mitted it has been a question that
men have long asked, because it
seemed only as an evil, but out of
the eater came forth the blessing in
the promise of Gods love, ''The seed
of the woman shall bruise the SER
pent's head" and the fulillment of
that promise in Christ and the gos-
pei is a blessing that the world could
not have known save through the
darkening shadow of sin.
The crucif1xion of the Master sp
peared TO his followers as though it
was evil-and evil only but through
tha6 death which friends lamented
and disciples bemoaned, the world
has come TO understand that it was
the way Of life. The enemies of the
Christ and his gospel sought 80 bring
his religion to naught by the perseou-
ton of his followers, but every perse-
cutting blow that babe the disciples
fee widened the sphere of their
activity, enlarged the field of their
opportunity, and was the sweetness
that was the outcome of the strong.
Our human lives and spiritual ex-
p~eriences are lived and experienced
under like conditions. Our mistakes
that seem most grievous rebound to
cur benefit our accidents are some
times productive of the greatest sue
cesses and our errors work out for
good. In the hour when afdiction
is heaviest we receive the o%learest
revelation. 1t is only when our bur
den has become too heavy for Us TO
bear that we begin to understand
the full significance. of the Masters
exhortation, ''Take my yoke upon
you and learn of me, for my yoke is
easy and my burden is light" Dis
appointment and grief that cause
the heart TO doubt and the faith to
waver lead US yet closer still into an
unfaltering trust, for there we have
learned that ''there is a Friend that
| sticketh closer than a brother, " and
that underneath US are the "ever-
lasting rms The Presbyterian.