"Well, one thing I will say. The fire swamp certainly does keep you on your toes. This will all soon be but a happy memory."

At a women's retreat someone asked me if the Christian life must be all crosses and suffering. "Is there no happiness for a believer?" My message that day had been on the great principle of the Cross: My life for yours, and I had tried to show how, though we must die many deaths if we truly follow Christ, life will always lead to the song, the laying down of life always to a resurrection. It is the enemy who would have us think always of death--any kind of death--as a dead end. Christ showed us that it is always, for the Christian, the gateway to life.

Nothing but crosses? No happiness?

"Thy will but holds me to my life's fruition" (George MacDonald, Diary of An Old Soul, April 25). In the path of obedience we shall find the only pure joy to be found anywhere in earth or heaven.

"Goodness and love unfailing, these will follow me all the days of my life" (Psalms 23:6).

--from The Music of His Promises, by Elisabeth Elliot