Streams in the Desert January 20 Daily Devotional

Sorrow is better than laughter, for by the sadness of the countenance the heart is made better (Eccl.7:3).
When sorrow comes under the power of Divine grace, it works out a manifold ministry in our lives. Sorrow reveals unknown depths in
the soul, and unknown capabilities of experience and
service. Gay, trifling people are always shallow, and never suspect
the little meannesses in their nature. Sorrow is God's plow share that turns up and subsods the depths of the soul, that it may yield richer harvests. If we had never fallen, or were in a glorified
state, then the strong torrents of Divine joy would be the normal force to open up all our souls' capacities; but in a fallen world,
sorrow, with despair taken out of it is the chosen power to reveal ourselves to ourselves. Hence it is sorrow that makes us think
deeply, long, and soberly.
Sorrow makes us go slower and more considerately, and
introspect our motives and dispositions. It is sorrow that opens up within us the capacities of the heavenly life, and it is sorrow
that makes us willing to launch our capacities on a boundless sea of service for God and our fellows.
We may suppose a class of indolent people living at the base of a
great mountain range, who had never ventured to explore the valleys and canyons back in the mountains; and some day, when a great
thunderstorm goes careening through the mountains, it turns the
hidden glens into echoing trumpets, and reveals the inner recesses Of the valley, like the convolutions of a monster shell, and then
the dwellers at the foot of the hills are astonished at the
labyrinths and unexplored recesses of a region so near by, and yet
so little known. So it is with many souls who indolently five on
the outer edge of their own natures until great thunderstorms of sorrow reveal hidden depths within that were never hitherto
suspected.
God never uses anybody to a large degree, until after He breaks that one all to pieces. Joseph had more sorrow than all the other sons of Jacob, and it led him out into a ministry of bread for all
nations. For this reason, the Holy Spirit said of him, "Joseph is a fruitful bough ... by a well, whose branches run over the wall" (Gen. 49:22). It takes sorrow to widen the soul. --The Heavenly Life.
The dark brown mould's upturned By the sharp-pointed plow;

And I've a lesson learned.
My life is but a field,
Stretched out beneath God's sky, Some harvest rich to yield.
Where grows the golden grain? Where faith? Where sympathy? In a furrow cut by pain.
--Maltbie D. Babcock
Every person and every nation must take lessons In God's school of adversity. "We can say, 'Blessed is night for it reveals to us the
stars.' In the say way we can say, 'Blessed is sorrow, for It
reveals God's comfort' The floods washed away home and mill, all
the poor man had in the world. But as he stood on the scene of his loss, after the water had subsided, broken-hearted and discouraged, he saw something shining in the bank which the waters had washed
bare. 'It looks like gold,' he said. It was gold. The flood which
had beggared him made him rich. So it is ofttimes in life." --H. C. Trumbull.