How to Treat Sorrow

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jul 19, 1883

How to Treat Sorrow.

SORROW comes into our lives like a visitor into our dwellings. How shall we treat the visitor? Shall we pay her every attention, or no attention? Shall the machinery of life be stopped altogether, and the operators stand still, making of her presence an interruption and an injury? Or shall she be treated as if she were not—no room made for her, no heed paid to her, no lesson learned from her? We treat no proper guest in either of these ways. We receive her and honor her, and minister to her, but home remains home, and life goes on, and we try to get good out of our friend's coming and staying. So sorrow comes at our heavenly Father's bidding, not to be ignored on the one hand, not to be supreme on the other, but to take up a disciplining and sanctifying abode with us. She comes not as an intruder to be driven out, not as a sovereign to take possession, but as a companion, whose daily intercourse is to purify and soften everything it touches, and who, when her mission is accomplished, will silently depart, leaving the blessing of her presence behind her.—Selected.