Daily Affirmations - Day 6 - The Promise of Dawn - Behind the Clouds
Day 6: Behind the clouds
You changed my sorrow into dancing. You took away my clothes of sadness, and clothed me in happiness (Psalm 30:11 – New Century Version).
Late on a summer afternoon rain began to fall. For half an hour it fell in gentle shower. All the while the sky in the low west was cloudless, and the sun, near his setting, shone in undimmed radiance.
Through the falling shower[the sun's] beams poured, making a scene of wonderful beauty. The crystal raindrops looked like diamonds as the sun's rays touched them, and the whole air seemed full of brilliant gems. Arching the eastern horizon a wondrous rainbow appeared, all its colors dazzling in their bright beauty.
So it is to the eye of Christian faith—when the clouds of trial gather overhead and the rain falls; it is still clear where the Father looks down upon His children. No clouds cover His face; the beams of His love stream through the falling shower; every teardrop becomes a precious gem, and the rainbow of peace glows upon the clouds...
"Be still, sad heart, and cease repining:
Behind the clouds—is the sun still shining.
Your fate is the common fate of all;
Into each life—some rain must fall,
Some days must be dark and dreary."
One Christmas a friend sent the poet Whittier a flower pressed between two pieces of glass. On one side, the appearance was without beauty—only an indistinct, blurred mass of something held beneath the pane—but on the other side the full exquisite beauty of the flower appeared delicately outlined under the glass.
The poet hung the token on his window, turning the lovely side inward. Those who passed by outside, looking up, marked only a "gray disc of clouded glass," seeing no beauty, perchance wondering that the poet would cherish anything so void of beauty; but he, sitting within, looked at the token, and saw outlined against the winter sky all the exquisite loveliness of the flower.
"They cannot from their outlook see
The perfect grace it has for me;
For there the flower whose fringes through
The frosty breath of autumn blew
Turns from without its face of bloom
To the warm tropic of my room,
As fair as when beside its brook
The hue of bending skies it took.
"But deeper meanings come to me,
My half-immortal flower, from Thee:
Man judges from a partial view;
None ever yet his brother knew.
The eternal Eye that sees the whole
May better read the darkened soul,
And find, to outward sense denied,
The flower upon its inmost side."
There is a side of perfect beauty—in every providence of Christian life; and there is also a side that is dark, blurred, or even repugnant. To those who look at the providence from within, sitting in the chamber of faith and peace—it appears in all the colors of heaven; but to those who stand outside, in the winter's cold, and look at it, it appears without one line of loveliness. Only those who behold God as their Father—see the beauty in His providences.
~ James R. Miller, Looking at the Right Side, 1888
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