Morning & Evening Devotional Reading–

 March 8– Evening

by C. H. Spurgeon, revised and edited by W. C. Neff

“She called him Ben-oni (son of sorrow), but his father called him Ben-jamin (son of my right hand.” 

—Genesis 35:18

To every matter, there is a bright as well as a dark side. Rachel was overwhelmed with sorrow as she gave birth to a son on her death bed. Jacob cried for the loss of the wife he loved, but he also saw the mercy of the child’s birth. It is good for us if we let the flesh mourn over our trials while our faith triumphs in divine faithfulness. Samson’s lion yielded honey and so will our hardships if we think about them the right way. The stormy sea feeds multitudes with fish. The wild forests bloom with beautiful flowers. The stormy wind blows away the bugs, and the biting frost loosens the soil. A vein of good is to be found in every mine of evil.

Sad hearts have a peculiar skill to view the hardships of life in the worst possible light. If there were only one quagmire in the world, they would soon be up to their necks in it; if there were only one lion in the desert, they would hear it roar. In all of us, there is a tinge of this wretched foolishness, and we are prone to think, “Everything is against me.”

Faith’s way of walking is to cast all our anxieties upon the Lord, and then to anticipate good results from the worst calamities. Like Gideon’s men, faith does not fret over the broken pitcher but rejoices that the lamp within blazes forth. Out of the rough oyster-shell of difficulty, faith extracts the rare pearl of honor. From the deep ocean-caves of distress, she lifts up the priceless coral of experience. When her flood of prosperity ebbs, she finds treasures hidden in the sand, and when her sun of delight goes down, she turns her telescope of hope to the starry promises of heaven. When death itself appears, faith points to the light of resurrection beyond the grave, and this turns our dying Ben-oni into our living Ben-jamin. [M&E]