The Value of Pain

“Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise Him;... when Thou shalt make His soul an offering for sin, He shall see His seed, He shall prolong His days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper i?i His hand.” — Is a. liii. 10.

“It pleased the Lord to bruise Him!” Strange pleasure this surely to dwell in the heart of the

All-Beneficent. Is it not the nature of the heavenly Father to give joy? Does He not delight rather in the laughter than in the tears of men? Why then should He find pleasure in the bruises of that heart in which there was no violence and no guile. Nay, but look deeper. The prophet tells us that the bruises of the Servant of God were the source of His prosperity: “When Thou shalt make His soul an offering, He shall prolong His days.” Wherever the soul is offered, wherever the will is given, there is a fresh access of life. Did not He find it so in the garden of Gethsemane? When did the angels come to Him with that strength which prolonged His days? Was it not when He took the Father’s cup in His hand and said, “Not as I will, but as Thou wilt.” No wonder that the Father was pleased to bruise Him; the bruising of His soul was the surrender of His will, and the surrender of His will was resurrection begun. The pressure of the flower brought out its perfume; the breaking of the alabaster box diffused its fragrance till it filled all the house. It recompensed the Father for the unloveliness of the past; it made atonement for the sins of the world.

Art thou chafing under the hand of thy God? art thou murmuring that He should seem to look on complacently while thy desire is being thwarted, while thy will is being denied? What if He is complacent? what if He is pleased to bruise thee? Thinkest thou that there cannot be a Divine benevolence which rejoices in thy moment of pain? Knowest thou not that there is a pain which gives cause for rejoicing? There is a pain which is the proof of convalescence, the sign that death is not yet. There is a pain which tells that the wound has not mortified, that there is life left in the mutilated member. There is a pain which is symptomatic of purity, which grows with the progress of purity, which cannot be felt by the impure. No conscience can feel the wound of sin but the tender conscience, no spirit can perceive its own unrest but the regenerated spirit. Ought not the sight of such pain to be dear to thy Father’s heart? must not thy Father strive to produce such pain? “What pleasure to Him can be the vision of thy perfect satisfaction with the earth; what is that but the vision that thou wert not made for Him. But if He shall see thee unsatisfied with the earth, if He shall make thee unsatisfied with the earth, then, indeed, it is meet that He should be glad, for, by the very want which earth cannot fill, He knows assuredly that thou art made for Himself alone. It is pleasing to thy Father’s heart to see the travail of thy soul.