Sorrow Seen in its True Light
Hartley Aspen. Lamentations 1:12-22 Is it nothing to you, all you that pass by? behold, and see if there be any sorrow like to my sorrow, which is done to me… "Everybody is so sorry for me except myself!" These are the words of Frances Ridley Havergal, that sweet singing spirit who dragged about through many years a weary, fragile, pain-ridden body. Everybody poured their sympathy upon her, and yet she half resented it. What is the secret of her triumph? She gives it us in one of the letters she wrote to her friends: "I see my pain in the light of Calvary." Everything depends upon the light in which we view things. There are objects in the material world which, seen in certain lights, are visions of glory. Deprived of that revealing light, they are grey and commonplace. The Screes at Wastwater, looked at in dull light, are only vast slopes of common pebble and common clay, but when the sunlight falls upon them they shine resplendent with the varied colours of a pigeon's neck. We must set our things in the right light. Frances Havergal set her pain in the light of Calvary, and so could almost welcome it. I remember another of her phrases, in which she said she never understood the meaning of the apostle's words, "In His own body," until she was in great pain herself, and then it seemed as though a new page of her Master's love had been unfolded to her. Bring your common drudgery, your dull duties, your oommonplace tasks, your heavy, sullen griefs, into the light of the Saviour s sacrifice, and they will glow and burn with new and unexpected glory. "In Thy light shall we see light." (Hartley Aspen.) Parallel Verses KJV: Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by? behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow, which is done unto me, wherewith the LORD hath afflicted me in the day of his fierce anger. WEB: Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by? Look, and see if there be any sorrow like my sorrow, which is brought on me, With which Yahweh has afflicted [me] in the day of his fierce anger.