Streams in the Desert December 2 Daily Devotional

Perfect through suffering (Heb. 2:10).
Steel is iron plus fire. Soil is rock, plus heat or glacier
crushing. Linen is flax plus the bath that cleans, the comb that
separates, and the flag that pounds, and the shuttle that weaves.
Human character must have a plus attached to it The world does not
forget great characters. But great characters are not made of luxuries, they are made by suffering.
I heard of a mother who brought into her home as a companion to her

own son, a crippled boy who was also a hunchback. She had warned her boy to be very careful in his relations to him, and not to
touch the sensitive part of his life but go right on playing with
him as if he were an ordinary boy. She listened to her son as they
were playing, and after a few minutes he said to his companion: "Do you know what you have got on your back?" The little hunchback was embarrassed, and he hesitated a moment The boy said: "It is the box in which your wings are; and some day God is going to cut it open,
and then you will fly away and be an angel."
Some day, God is going to reveal the fact to every Christian, that
the very principles they now rebel against have been the
instruments which He used in perfecting their characters and moulding them into perfection, polished stones for His great building yonder. --Cortland Myers.
Suffering is a wonderful fertilizer to the roots of character. The great object of this life is character. This is the only thing we
can carry with us into eternity.... To gain the most of it and the best
of it is the object of probation. --Austin Phelps.
By the thorn road and no other is the mount of vision won.