a blessing is in it...

This from Rufus Ellis.  A message that I have come to believe deeply but remember sporadically...

"THE BLESSING OF OUR LIFE.
"A Blessing is in it. "Isaiah

 "A BLESSING is in it," — covered up out of sight, to be waited for with patience, to be sought with diligence, missed by most persons, found by a few, strangely withheld sometimes, and ever brought to us in what looks like the very opposite. A blessing is in our life. You say, This is a duty, a very hard and a very solemn duty; yes, but " a blessing is in it." You say, This is a trial, a thorn in the flesh, a real grief, a life-long disappointment, no light and momentary affliction; yes, but "a blessing is in it." You tell me that man's life is weighted with cares and troubles, consumed with labors and watchings; yes, but " a blessing is in it." You say that the end hastens on, one end for all the living, one death which all must die; yes, but blessed are the dying, and blessed are the dead. When God commands, it is because He proposes to bless. When God afflicts, it is because He proposes to bless. With the righteousness of His kingdom peace and joy are ever bound up. We can hardly say that we know Him as we may and ought to know Him, or have got beyond the elements of religion, until with an increasing sense of obligation there comes an increase of the light of life, and with every fresh anxiety and sorrow a sweetness and gladness and repose of heart which had never been felt before. If we find and experience all that is hard to do and hard to bear, while no joy fills the soul and no brightness comes into the face, we miss what God provides; for true religion opens its most searching discourse with beatitudes, and teaches in the first sentence of its sternest catechism that man was created not only to obey God, but to enjoy Him forever."

Blessings