Sopstories

Proverbs 15

30 A cheerful look brings joy to the heart,
and good news gives health to the bones.

Nothing has encouraged me more than this classic devotional by Mrs Charles Cowman. When I was first diagnosed with bone metastasis in 2005, this devotional gripped me. Mrs Charles Cowman was not unacquainted with grief and despair. Yet out of her struggles, she understood what a believer’s hope rests in – our Lord.

As I continue to believe in the Lord for healing, especially in the area of my bones, I did a quick search in the bible. Proverbs 15:30 is one of a few that points out how a healing in the bones can come about – Good News. And what better news than the Word of God. Sometimes we need a veteran, a pilgrim who has walked before us to guide our way. I find Mrs Charles Cowman one such pilgrim – and her devotional an invaluable tool to help me focus on the good news, on the Healer, on our Creator. Let me just give you an abbreviated sample of her devotional:

Streams - but not quite in the desert!

The Captive by Mrs. Charles E. Cowman

“As I was among the captives by the river of Chebar, the heavens were opened and I saw visions of God . . . and the hand of the Lord was there upon me” (Ezek. 1:1,3).

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If we are to receive benefit from our captivity we must accept the situation and turn it to the best possible account. Fretting over that from which we have been removed or which has been taken away from us, will not make things better, but it will prevent us from improving those which remain. The bond is only tightened by our stretching it to the uttermost.

The impatient horse which will not quietly endure his halter only strangles himself in his stall. The high-mettled animal that is restive in the yoke only galls his shoulders; and every one will understand the difference between the restless starling of which Sterne has written, breaking its wings against the bars of the cage, and crying, “I can’t get out, I can’t get out,” and the docile canary that sits upon its perch and sings as if it would outrival the lark soaring to heaven’s gate.

No calamity can be to us an unmixed evil if we carry it in direct and fervent prayer to God, for even as one in taking shelter from the rain beneath a tree may find on its branches fruit which he looked not for, so we in fleeing for refuge beneath the shadow of God’s wing, will always find more in God than we had seen or known before.

It is thus through our trials and afflictions that God gives us fresh revelations of Himself; and the Jabbok ford leads to Peniel, where, as the result of our wrestling, we “see God face to face,” and our lives are preserved. Take this to thyself, O captive, and He will give thee “songs in the night,” and turn for thee “the shadow of death into the morning.” –William Taylor

“Submission to the divine will is the softest pillow on which to recline.”

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