The Children For Christ by Andrew Murray

taking away a child, God meant to take us away from ourselves, and to
make room in the heart for Himself. Weeping often only fills us with
ourselves. God would have us in the affliction learn to bear, and love,
and worship His will. Weeping is often the homage, yea, the adoration,
of our own will.
Beloved mourner! hear the voice of Jesus say, `Weep not.’ He does not
say it without a reason. It is not enough that the tumult of the crowd
outside is put away, and that there is silence in the room; the tumult of
thought and feeling must be hushed too, within the soul there must be
silence. At the bidding of Jesus the gush of tears must be restrained,
and the heart must turn to Him, to ask who this is who thus, with
authority, bids us cease our weeping, and what He has to say to justify
His injunction. Obedience to the command is the path to the comfort
He brings.
And what is the comfort Jesus gives? He leads from the visible to the
invisible; where we only see death, He speaks of life; He comes to rouse
us to faith, and to it He reveals Himself as the Living and Life giving
One. `Weep not: she is not dead, but sleeps.’ With these words Jesus
draws near to the lifeless form of each little one over whom a mother’s
bursting heart is weeping, to remind her that death has been
conquered,and that the loved one is not dead, in the terrible meaning
which sin gave that word, but truly sleeps, in the deep and blessed sense
which that word now has in His mouth.
Your little one is not dead. Judge not by sight. There is a better life than
the life of this earth — the eternal life in which God dwells. In that
eternal life there is a sleep provided for those who are in Christ Jesus,
the blessed waiting time till He comes to gather all His own. As the life
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