The Hidden Thorn
“And they departed into a desert place by ship privately.*’ — Mark vi. 32.
If you have a desert place in your heart to which you must sometimes go, you should depart to it in a ship privately.” No man should make a thoroughfare of his desert. Keep your grief for the private ship. Never go into company with an abstracted mind; that is to display your desert. You hale sometimes refrained from God’s table of communion because your thoughts were away. You did well. Man’s table of communion has the same need. If you are bidden to a feast when you are troubled in your mind, try first whether you can carry your burden privately away. If you can, then leave the desert behind you, “anoint thy head and wash thy face that thou appear not unto men to fast.” But if you cannot, if there is no ship that can take away your burden in secret, then come not yet to the feast. Journey not while the cloud is resting over the tabernacle. Tarry under the cloud. Watch one hour in the garden. Bury thy sorrow in the silence. Let thy heart be reconciled to thy Father, and then come to the world and offer thy gift.
O Thou that hast hid Thy thorn beneath a rose, steer the ship in which I conceal my burden! Thou hast gone to the feast of Cana from the fast in the wilderness; where hast Thou hid the print of the nails? In love. Steer me to that burying-ground! Let the ship, on its way to my desert, touch for an hour at the desert of my brother! Let me feel the fellowship of grief, the community of sorrow, the kindredness of pain! Let me hear the voices from other wildernesses, the sighs from other souls, the groans from other graves! And, when I come to my own landing-place and put down my hand to lift up my burden, I shall meet a wondrous surprise. It will be there, but it will be there half-sized. Its heaviness will be gone, its impossibility will have vanished. I shall lift it easily; I shall carry it lightly; I shall bury it swiftly. I shall be ready for Cana in an hour, ready for Calvary in a few moments. I shall go back to enter into the struggle of the multitude; and the multitude will say, “There is no desert with kim /”