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我在暗中告訴你們的，你們要在明處說出來。」（聖經馬太福音十章 27 節）
我們的主常帶我們到黑暗中去，為著要和我們說話。有時祂帶我們進入孤單的黑暗，有時祂帶我們進入憂傷的黑暗，有時祂帶我們進入失望的黑暗，有時祂帶我們進入疾病的黑暗。
然後祂告訴我們祂偉大的、神奇的、永遠的、無限的奧祕；祂開啟我們迷濛的眼睛，叫我們看見屬天的榮耀；祂開通我們聾聵的耳朵，叫我們聽見祂的聲音。在黑暗裡我們能學到以前從來沒有學到的課程。
可是我們得到了啟示以後，就有一個責任 ；「你們要在明處說出來 ……要在屋頂上宣揚出來。」
這樣看來，我們受苦，並非是毫無意義，毫無目的的。很多時候，我們在受苦的時候會悲嘆說：「我還有什麼用處呢？我對於人類有甚麼益處呢？我寶貴的一生就這樣浪費了嗎？」我告訴你：神是有目的的。神要我們和祂有最高的交通，神要我們能面對面聽祂說話，將信息帶給在山腳下的人們。
摩西在西乃山、以利亞在何烈山、保羅在亞拉伯，豈都是白費時日呢？
基督人必須有單獨默想，與上帝交通的時間。我們的身體怎樣需要食物，我們的靈也照樣需要山上的交通，巖下的安息。
這樣，我們纔會時時覺得上帝的同在，能和大衛一同說：「耶和華阿，祢與我相近。」（詩一一九51）──梅爾（F.B.Meyer）
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"What I tell you in the darkness, speak ye in the light."(Matt. 10:27.)
OUR Lord is constantly taking us into the dark, that He may tell us things. Into the dark of the shadowed home, where bereavement has drawn the blinds; into the dark of the lonely, desolate life, where some infirmity closes us in from the light and stir of life; into the dark of some crushing sorrow and disappointment.
Then He tells us His secrets, great and wonderful, eternal and infinite; He causes the eye which has become dazzled by the glare of earth to behold the heavenly constellations; and the ear to detect the undertones of his voice, which is often drowned amid the tumult of earth's strident cries.
But such revelations always imply a corresponding responsibility─"that speak ye in the light─that proclaim upon the housetops."
This gives a new meaning to suffering, the saddest element in which is often its apparent aimlessness. "How useless I am!" "What am I doing for the betterment of men?" "Wherefore this waste of the precious spikenard of my soul?" Such are the desperate laments of the sufferer. But God has a purpose in it all. He has withdrawn His child to the higher altitudes of fellowship, that he may hear God speaking face to face, and bear the message to his fellows at the mountain foot.
Were the forty days wasted that Moses spent on the Mount, or the period spent at Horeb by Elijah, or the years spent in Arabia by Paul?
There is no short cut to the life of faith, which is the all-vital condition of a holy and victorious life. We must have periods of lonely meditation and fellowship with God. That our souls should have their mountains of fellowship, their valley of quiet rest beneath the shadow of a great rock, their nights beneath the stars, when darkness has veiled the material and silenced the stir of human life, and has opened the view of the infinite and eternal, is as indispensable as that our bodies should have food.
Thus alone can the sense of God's presence become the fixed possession of the soul, enabling it to say repeatedly, with the Psalmist, "Thou art near, 0 God." --F. B. Meyer
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