| Garden of the Heart |
Chapter 4 |
Page 8 |
Thus the child of the ranch learned her lesson – that God loved her though He had allowed her to suffer, that He had allowed her to suffer because He loved her. Out of the suffering, too, good came in the end. There were possibilities of beauty in the girl’s life which could not be called out while she was well and strong. But when her life was broken, crushed, and laid in helplessness and pain on her bed, then the Master came and sowed in her heart good seeds, the seeds of the Spirit, seeds from heaven’s gardens, and at length the flowers of the Spirit were growing in beauty in her life.
“Thou art Simon… thou shalt be called Peter.” Between what this wild girl was at the beginning and what she became at last lay all the terrible experience of pain, suffering, anguish, torture. It was in this way that Christ called out the best that was in her. Indeed it was in the same way that the best in Jesus Himself was called out; for we read that He was “made perfect through suffering.”
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