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Music For the Soul
Devotional: November 3rd

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THE MISSION OF PERSECUTION

Ye both had compassion on them that were in bonds, and took joyfully the spoiling of your possessions. - Hebrews 10:34

The possession of the enduring substance of Christ lifts us above all loss or change. "Ye took joyfully the spoiling of your goods," says the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews, speaking to his hearers of some afflictions and persecutions which have long faded out of memory. We know not what the circumstances were to which he refers. Evidently there had been some pretty stringent and severe persecution of Christians, which had led to large financial losses. " Ye took joyfully the spoiling of your goods." How came it that they were so turned about from man’s usual attitude as to welcome what most people resist, or at least regret? How came it? Why - "knowing that ye had yourselves for a better and an enduring possession." It does not matter much to the man that has vaults on vaults full of sacks of bullion whether a few shillings may be lost in the course of a day’s work. It does not matter much to the merchant who has his warehouse piled with goods though one or two day’s transactions may be unprofitable. And if we have the durable riches in the possession of our own selves, we can afford to look - and we shall look - with comparatively quiet hearts on the going of all that can go, and be able to bear losses and sorrows, and "all the ills that flesh is heir to," in an altogether different fashion from what we should do if we could not fall back upon the wealth within, and feel that nothing can touch that.

If we rightly understood the mission of loss, pain, or sorrow, and that each was intended to make us possess more fully the only true riches - that each was meant to make us better, more masters of ourselves, and enriched by such possession- we should not so often murmur or faint when the blows come, nor be so ready to exclaim, "Oh! the mysteries of Providence!" but rather be quick to say, " All things work together for good to them that love God." For, if my "loss" of outward things makes me "gain" in patience, in refinement, in fixed faith in Jesus Christ, in quiet submission to Him, then I enter the item on the wrong page if I put it upon the " losses" side of the book. I should put it on the "profits" side; for it profits a man more to gain himself than to gain or keep the whole world.

So the right understanding of what our wealth is, and the right understanding of the relation of sorrow and pain and loss to the true wealth in ourselves, would make us not only take patiently, but "joyfully," all possible disaster and loss. And we may come to reproduce that heroism of glad faith which the old prophet showed when he sang, "Though the fig tree shall not blossom, and there be no fruit in the vine; though the labour of the olive shall fail, and there be no meat in the field; though the flock be cut off from the fold, and there be no herd in the stall, yet shall I rejoice in the Lord, and joy in the God of my salvation."

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