[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":4},["ShallowReactive",2],{"reading-1202":3},"DECEMBER 2\r\nPerfect through suffering (Heb. 2:10).\r\nSteel is iron plus fire. Soil is rock, plus heat or glacier\r\ncrushing. Linen is flax plus the bath that cleans, the comb that\r\nseparates, and the flag that pounds, and the shuttle that weaves.\r\nHuman character must have a plus attached to it The world does not\r\nforget great characters. But great characters are not made of luxuries, they are made by suffering.\r\nI heard of a mother who brought into her home as a companion to her\r\n\r\nown 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\r\ntouch the sensitive part of his life but go right on playing with\r\nhim as if he were an ordinary boy. She listened to her son as they\r\nwere 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,\r\nand then you will fly away and be an angel.\"\r\nSome day, God is going to reveal the fact to every Christian, that\r\nthe very principles they now rebel against have been the\r\ninstruments which He used in perfecting their characters and moulding them into perfection, polished stones for His great   building yonder. --Cortland Myers.\r\nSuffering is a wonderful fertilizer to the roots of character. The great object of this life is character. This is the only thing we\r\ncan carry with us into eternity.... To gain the most of it and the best\r\nof it is the object of probation. --Austin Phelps.\r\nBy the thorn road and no other is the mount of vision won.",1783499794085]