GROWING IN THE GLOOM

In one of my garden books there is a chapter with a very interesting  heading, “Flowers that Grow in the Gloom.” It deals with those patches  in a garden which never catch the sunlight. And my guide tells me the  sort of flowers which are not afraid of these dingy corners–may rather  like them and flourish in them.

And there are similar things in the world of the spirit. They come out  when material circumstances become stern and severe. They grow in the  gloom. How can we otherwise explain some of the experiences of the  Apostle Paul?

Here he is in captivity at Rome. The supreme mission of his life  appears to be broken. But it is just in this besetting dinginess that  flowers begin to show their faces in bright and fascinating glory. He  may have seen them before, growing in the open road, but never as they  now appeared in incomparable strength and beauty. Words of promise  opened out their treasures as he had never seen them before.

Among those treasures were such wonderful things as the grace of  Christ, the love of Christ, the joy and peace of Christ; and it seemed  as though they needed an “encircling gloom” to draw out their secret and their inner glory. At any rate the realm of gloom became the home of  revelation, and Paul began to realize as never before the range and  wealth of his spiritual inheritance.

Who has not known men and women who, when they arrive at seasons of  gloom and solitude, put on strength and hopefulness like a robe? You may imprison such folk where you please; but you shut up their treasure  with them. You cannot shut it out. You may make their material lot a  desert, but “the wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad, and  the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose.”