e us. We think too often of our
bereavements, for example, as if God took away the friend, ending his
life, just to chasten or punish us. But we have no right to take so
narrow a view of God's design in the removal of loved ones from our
side. His purpose concerns them as well as us. They are called away
because their work on earth is done, and higher service in other
spheres awaits them. To them death is gain, promotion, translation.
The event itself, in its primary significance, is a joyous and blessed
one. The sorrow which we experience in their removal is but an
incident. God cannot take them home to glory from our side, without
giving us pain. But we must not reverse this order and think that the
primary end of the calling away of our beloved ones is to chasten us,
or to cause us to suffer. No doubt there is blessing for us as well as
for them in their leaving us, since all things work together for good
to them that love God; but we unduly exaggerate our own importance when
we think of God as laying a beautiful life low in death merely to teach
us some lesson or give to us some blessing.

When we look at our bereavements in this light, and think of what death
means to our beloved ones who have been taken from us, we find new
comfort in the thought of their immortality, their release from
suffering and temptation, and their full blessedness with Christ. It
is selfish for us to forget this in the absorption of our own grief.
Should we not be willing to endure loss and pain that those dear to us
may receive gain and blessing?

Even in life's relationships on the earth we are continually taught the
same lesson. Parents must give up their children, losing them out of
the home nest, that they may go forth into the world to take up life's
duties for themselves. Then also the separation is painful, but it is
borne in the sweet silence of self-denying love. We give up our
friends when they are called from our side to accept other and higher
places. Life is full of such separations, and we are taught that it is
our duty to think of others, bearing our own loss in patience for their
sake. Does not the same law of love "that seeketh not its own" apply
when our beloved ones are called up higher?

Of lessons to be learned in sorrow the first always is submission. We
are told even of our Lord that he "learned obedience by the things
which he suffered." This is life's great, all-inclusive lesson. When
we have