His Palaces Beautiful

One of a parent’s hardest things is to see a child go through times of difficulty, sorrow, pain, hardship or want.  And yet we do not see the future, we do not know for what purposes God has chosen that falling out of providence, perfect in plan but packaged rough and wrapped to hide the blessing for a time.

It was in a rustic bookstore in some little Michigan town, stuffed amid piles of used books, mostly cheaper novels and cookbooks, that I found it.  On the red spine in faded gilt I read Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons.  That couldn’t possibly be Adoniram Judson’s wives?  Reading To the Golden Shore together has been one of my favorite memories, and I am fascinated by this first missionary to Burma who laid wives and children in the grave one after another and saw no fruit from his work for seven years.  (Can you imagine how poignant it was, recently to see photos of Burmese Christians – now Myanmar—loving and serving God under persecution?)  Anyway, the book’s price read $90 and I regretfully put it back.  But the store owner wanted me to have it and sold it to me for $20.  It is indeed a treasure.

 

His second wife was as intelligent and skilled with the pen as his first.  Both were amazing, cultivated women of great talent.  In reading on his second wife, Sarah, the biographer comments on the fruit of hardships in young years:

“Her parents not being wealthy, she was early trained to those habits of industry, thoughtfulness and self-denial which distinguished her through life.  Children so situated are sometimes pitied by those who consider childhood as the proper season for careless mirth and reckless glee; but hey often form characters of solid excellence rarely possessed by those to who fortune has been more indulgent.  Their struggles with obstacles in the way of improvement, and final triumph over them, is an invaluable preparation for the rude conflicts of life; their ingenuity is quickened by the hourly necessity of expedients to meet emergencies, and the many trials which are unavoidable in their circumstances, and which must be met with energy and resolution, give habits of patient endurance, and noble courage…

It is not one of the least of the compensations with which the providence of God abounds, that the very lack of favorable circumstances is sometimes most favorable to the development of latent resources….her whole career shows that her mind had been early trained and disciplined in that noblest of all schools, the school of adverse fortune."

Someone who was very concerned for the continued safety of their child asked me recently, were I to go back and change things, if I would my eldest daughter not have broken her leg.  Six years ago now, the break was a bad one – at the femur, just as her growth plates were developing; and for months there was a question as to whether she would have to have a hip replacement as a teen.   When I reflect on all the ways God grew her through this into a young woman of godly grace, heart-luminous, how could I say I would choose differently than God had chosen?

“Some things cannot be done in a day.  God does not make a sunset glory in a moment, but for days may be massing the mist out of which He builds His palaces beautiful in the west.”  (author unknown)  “Palaces beautiful” reminds me of Psalm 144:12—“That our daughters may be as pillars sculpted in palace style”.  Oh, that we would stay our hands from grasping God’s to pull it away from His sculpting work; we are assured that their growing beauty will be perfected under His loving eye.