Finding Hope in Suffering With Amy CarmichaelUzorak

Find Harbor and Joy Eternal

I was thinking partly of my own need and partly of you when I opened my Bible at Luke 24:26. “Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into His glory?” It was the “ought not” that laid hold on me. I must not wish less than He accepted as something that “ought” to be, for any of you. It is easier far to accept for oneself than for another. And yet the Father and the Blessed Spirit, and the loving angels too, accepted it for the holy Son of God.

I am glad that the “Enter into the joy of thy Lord” (Matt. 25:23) is the certain ending of everything that is so painful today for you who travail to save the souls for whom Christ died. And all that travail means is only for a moment. “If for a season . . .” “After that ye have suffered awhile . . .” (1 Pet. 5:4–11) Joy, not suffering, is eternal.

And there are many joys now. May your day be full of joy, the kind that is strength.

I understand the buffeted days and the days of no small tempest, when neither sun nor stars appear. And it is good to pass through such days, for if we didn’t we could neither prove our God nor help others. If any experience of ours helps to bring others to our Lord, what does any buffeting matter?

But we are not meant to live in a perpetual stormy sea. We are meant to pass through and find harbor and so be at peace. Then we are free from occupation with ourselves and our storms—free to help others.

I want to live in the light of the thought of His coming, His triumph—the end of this present darkness, the glory of His seen Presence. This bathes the present in radiance. You won’t be sorry then that you trusted when you couldn’t see, when neither sun nor stars in many days appeared and no small tempest lay on you (Acts 27:20). No, you won’t be sorry then. So I won’t be sorry now. I am believing. “All joy and peace in believing”: the words ring like a chime of bells (Rom. 15:13).

EXCERPTS from Candles in the Dark: Letters of Hope and Encouragement by Amy Carmichael. For more information, please visit https://www.clcpublications.com/shop/candles-in-the-dark/

Amy Carmichael was the eldest daughter of a large Christ-centered family in Millisle, Ireland. She was impressed at an early age that “nothing is important but that which is eternal.” This understanding proved to be the foundation for her service to the Lord among the mill workers of Ireland, the Japanese briefly, and then in India, where she began her ministry to children in 1895 and where she remained until her death in 1951.