“After that ye have suffered awhile” (I. Peter v. 10).
Beloved, are we learning love in the school of suffering? Are our hearts being mellowed and deepened by the summer heat of trial until the fruit of the Spirit, “which is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, meekness, temperance, faith, is ripening for the harvest of His coming, and our sufferings are easily borne for His sake”? Oh, this is the school of love, and makes Him unutterably more dear to our hearts and us to His. And thus only can we ever learn with Him the heavenly charity which “suffers long, and is kind.”
We see the very first and the very last feature of the face of love, as delineated in St. Paul’s portrait (I. Cor. xiii.), are marks of pain and patient suffering, “suffers long,” “endureth all things.” So let us learn thus in the school of love to suffer and be kind, to endure all things.
Surely it will not be hard to love through all when it is the heart of Jesus within us which will love and continue to love to the very end.
I want the love that suffers and is kind, That envies not nor vaunts its pride or fame, Is not puffed up, does no discourteous act, Is not provoked, nor seeks its own to claim.