Streams in the Desert July 28 Daily Devotional

The Lord hath His way in the whirlwind and storm (Nahum 1:3).
I recollect, when a lad, and while attending a classical institute in the vicinity of Mount Pleasant sitting on an elevation of that mountain, and watching a storm as it came up the valley. The
heavens were filled with blackness, and the earth was shaken by the
voice of thunder. It seemed as though that fair landscape was utterly changed, and its beauty gone never to return.
But the storm swept on, and passed out of the valley; and if I had sat in the same place on the following day, and said, "Where is
that terrible storm, with all its terrible blackness?" the grass
would have said, "Part of it is in me," and the daisy would have said, "Part of it is in me, " and the fruits and flowers and
everything that grows out of the ground would have said, "Part of the storm is incandescent in me."
Have you asked to be made like your Lord? Have you longed for the
fruit of the Spirit, and have you prayed for sweetness and
gentleness and love? Then fear not the stormy tempest that is at
this moment sweeping through your life. A blessing is in the storm,
and there will be the rich fruitage in the "afterward." --Henry Ward Beecher.
The flowers live by the tears that fall From the sad face of the skies;
And life would have no joys at all, Were there-no watery eyes.
Love thou thy sorrow: grief shall bring Its own excuse in after years;
The rainbow!-see how fair a thing God hath built up from tears.
--Henry S. Sutton.