The Education of Bereavement

“As an eagle stirreth up her nest ‘.... so the Lord alone did lead him.” — Deuteronomy xxxii. ii, 12.

What a startling thought — that the breaking up of the nest is an act of God’s benevolence! I always looked upon it as a calamity. We are all familiar with the experience of the breaking-up of home. We remember the glad circle round the old fire, and how it grew thinner and thinner. One went to the colonies; one went out to be a governess; one departed with a stranger to a house of her own; more than one passed into the silent land. I always thought it a subject for tears. But here is an old writer who makes it a subject for praise, blesses God for it, declares it to be the first step of my education! I can understand God’s love in many things. I can understand why I should praise Him for His gifts to body and soul. But I lose my breath in surprise when I am asked to make the first stanza of my hymn the adoration of His mercy in loosing the ties of home!

Nay, my soul, it is to strengthen these ties that thy Father breaks up the nest. It is not to get rid of home He would teach thee to fly. It is that thou mayst learn by travel that thy home is wider than thy nest. He would have thee learn that in thy Father’s house are many mansions, of which thy nest is only one. He would tell thee of a brotherhood in Christ which includes, yet transcends, thy household fires. He would tell thee of a family altar which makes thee brother to the outcast, sister to the friendless, father to the homeless, mother to the sick, son to the feeble, daughter to the aged — in kinship to all. Dost thou remember how the child Jesus in the temple lost His parents for a time. It was to Him the first breaking ot the nest; it made Him think in His solitude of the wider house of His Father. So is it with thy temple, O my soul. Thy parents, thy brothers, thy sisters, leave thee behind; and in the vacant place there arises a new altar — humanity. Thy Father has given thee wings in the nighty wings in the breaking of thy ties. Thou hast soared by thy sorrow; thou hast loved by thy loss; thou hast widened by thy weeping; thou hast grown by thy grief; thou hast broadened in being broken; thou hast enlarged thy sympathy by emptying out thy treasures. The storm that shook thy nest taught thee to fly.