“Make us glad according to the days wherein Thou hast afflicted us, and the years wherein we have seen evil” (Psalm 90:15).
Chastening is the proof of the Lord’s love, the evidence of our sonship: scourging the road to reception. Subjection to the Father of spirits and life go together. The end is the partaking of His holiness.
David sung, “BEFORE I was afflicted I went astray.” I don’t suppose he sang whilst afflicted. More likely the tear fell and the flesh quivered. He did not know the end. The Lord did, and His love would carry him and us to the end though the path he bedewed by our tears and the air resounds with our sighs and our couches are witness of our secret groanings. “Behold we count them happy which endure. Ye have heard of the patience of Job, and have seen THE END OF THE LORD: that the Lord is very pitiful and of tender mercy.” Yes, Job, living as he did in days when there were no written scriptures full of comfort and hope, no Holy Ghost indwelling as now, the believer, could say, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him.”
What can we say, beloved; we who can measure everything by Him? “He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not also with Him freely give us all things”—yes, sorrow as well as joy; tears as well as laughter; pinch as well as plenty; frowns as well as smiles.
But we can understand this: all these ways are eventually making for joy, gladness, peace; all making for blessing, happiness, and conformity to Christ in glory. No wonder the psalmist, according to his measure and light—we, indeed, in a fuller measure—could pray to God, “MAKE US GLAD according to the days wherein Thou hast afflicted us.” What a cheer to our spirits! What a comfort in trial! What a prospect!
A feeble saint, well stricken in years, asked me for a verse recently. I gave her Psalm 90:15. The effect was happy. She looked back upon her long days of affliction, the long years in which she had seen evil, only to look forward and see in the near future the answer to her prayer, “MAKE US GLAD according to the days wherein Thou hast afflicted us.”
And whilst we look forward to gladness without a sorrow, a rose without a thorn, a future without a drawback, even now amid our sorrow we are reaping gladness and soy, an earnest of what is to come.