[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":4},["ShallowReactive",2],{"reading-0824":3},"AUGUST 24\r\nI have all, and abound (Phil. 4:18).\r\nIn one of my garden books there is a chapter with a very\r\ninteresting heading, \"Flowers that Grow in the Gloom.\" It deals\r\nwith those patches in a garden which never catch the sunlight and my guide tells me the sort of flowers which are not afraid of these  dingy corners may rather like them and flourish in them.\r\nAnd there are similar things in the world of the spirit They come\r\nout when material circumstances become stern and severe. They grow in the gloom. How can we otherwise explain some of the experiences    of the Apostle Paul?\r\nHere he is in captivity at Rome. The supreme mission of his fife appears to be broken. But it is just in this besetting dinginess\r\nthat flowers begin to show their faces in bright and fascinating\r\nglory. He may have seen them before, growing in the open road, but never as they now appeared in incomparable strength and beauty.\r\nWords of promise opened out their treasures as he had never seen them before.\r\nAmong those treasures were such wonderful things as the\r\nof Christ the love of Christ, the joy and peace of Christ and it\r\nseemed as though they needed an \"encircling gloom\" to draw out\r\ntheir secret and their inner glory. At any rate the realm of gloom\r\nbecame the home of revelation, and Paul began to realize as never before the range and wealth of his spiritual inheritance.\r\nWho has not known men and women who, when they arrive at seasons of gloom and solitude, put on strength and hopefulness like a robe?\r\nYou may imprison such folk where you please; but you shut up their treasure with them. You cannot shut it out You may make their\r\nmaterial lot a desert, but \"the wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad, and the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the  rose.\" --Dr. Jowett.\r\n\"Every flower, even the fairest has its shadow beneath it as it swings in the sunlight.\"\r\nWhere there is much light there is much shade.",1783499793482]