Streams in the Desert July 25 Daily Devotional

What I do thou knowest not now, but thou shaft know hereafter (John 13:7).
We have only a partial view here of God's dealings, His half
completed, half-developed plan: but all will stand out in fair and graceful proportions in the great finished Temple of Eternity! Go, in the reign of Israel's greatest king, to the heights of Lebanon.
See that noble cedar, the pride of its compeers, an old wrestler
with northern blasts! Summer loves to smile upon it night spangles its feathery foliage with dewdrops, the birds nestle on its
branches, the weary pilgrim or wandering shepherd reposes under Its
shadows from the midday heat or from the furious storm; but all at once it is marked out to fall. The aged denizen of the forest is
doomed to succumb to the woodman's stroke!
As we see the axe making its first gash on its gnarled trunk, then the noble limbs stripped of their branches, and at last the "Tree
of God," as was its distinctive epithet coming with a crash to the
ground, we exclaim against the wanton destruction, the demolition of this proud pillar in the temple of nature. We are tempted to cry
with the prophet as if inviting the sympathy of every lowlier
stem-invoking inanimate things to resent the affront- "Howl, fir tree; for the cedar has fallen!"
But wait a little. Follow that gigantic trunk as the workmen of
Hiram launch it down the mountain side; thence conveyed in rafts
along the blue waters of the Mediterranean; and last of all, behold it set a glorious polished beam in the Temple of God. As you see
its destination, placed in the very Holy of Holies, in the diadem
of the Great King--say, can you grudge that "the crown of Lebanon"
was despoiled, in order that this jewel might have so noble a setting?
That cedar stood as a stately prop in Nature's sanctuary, but "the glory of the latter house was greater than the glory of the former!
How many of our souls are like these cedars of old! God's axes of trial have stripped & bard them. We see no reason for dealings so dark & mysterious, but He has a noble end & object in view; to set them as everlasting pillars & rafters in His Heavenly Zion; to make them a "crown of glory in the hand of the Lord, & a royal diadem in the hand of our God." --Macduff.
I do not ask my cross to understand, My way to see--
Better in darkness just to feel Thy hand, And follow Thee.