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Health and sickness, joy and sorrow, life and death, are strangely intermingled in the stories of human lives. They are the threads, the warp and the weft, of which the web of life is woven. Until sin is gone, it is better for us to keep the sorrows and the sicknesses and even the dyings; for these are God's agents for stamping upon sin its true character, and he makes them to be but the anguish of our deliverance from sin's power and dominion. In our times of bereavement we ought to know -

I. THAT THE DEATH OF OUR BELOVED ONES IS A PRECIOUS THING TO GOD. These "deaths" are certainly very precious things to us, whether they come as a sudden call or follow upon many days of weary watching. There is peculiar sacredness in a time of death for a family. The family bend never seems so closely knit as then. Each member makes so much of each other member in those hours of common sorrow. Our text says that the dying of our friends is so precious to God. We may think of God as our Father; as one of our family, the very Head of our family, and therefore the one on whom the heaviest part of the burden falls. No one feels so deeply as the father and the mother; and in calling himself the great Father, he unveils a heart of infinite sympathy, that "bears our griefs, and carries our sorrows." How God feels toward us finds its illustration in the manifested God - Christ Jesus. The sympathies of Nain, the tears of Bethany, show us our God. The death of the saint is so precious to God:

1. Because the trust of the dying is so severely tested. What the mysterious conflicts of the time of death are none of us can know, perhaps none of us can imagine. In perilous disease we may have been to the "border-land;" but, then, the border-land is a very wide space, and we have not really felt what it is for the soul fully to face the eternal, The struggle must be a great and sore one, for even the best of men, when they come to die, have a time during which their faith seems to fail, and their hope to die out. It is a most "precious" thing to God for a human soul to be in struggle.

2. Because the living who are left are so overwhelmed with sorrow. Of the heavenly sphere it is said, "And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes." That means that the sympathy felt by God in their tear-bringing sorrows will by-and-by be able to express itself without limit or hindrance. Our tears are precious things to our heavenly Father, though, for the holiest ends, he may bid them flow on while we tarry here below.

3. Because through death God brings his children home to himself. To him death is precious; he thinks about it, is anxious about it, rejoices in the anticipation of that which follows it, looks on it much as the parent looks on the perilous journey which brings his absent child home. If we could always think of our beloved as gone home to our Father and theirs, their death would become precious to us. We think of them as dead, gone from earthly love and fellowship. Better think of them as having found the true love and the eternal fellowship.

II. THAT THE DEATH OF OUR FRIENDS FITS IN WITH GOD'S PERFECT AND LOVING PLAN FOR US. When we look over our past lives we often can see the wisdom and goodness manifested in isolated scenes and incidents; but we fail to see the wonderful ways in which the various experiences fit in together. It is not always an easy thing to discern what the common things have to do with the special things, or how the special things have become necessary in order to teach more effectively the lessons learned from the common things. We fail to discern the plan. God's plan in our life is not at present offered to our comprehension. It is offered to our faith. Our life is a worked pattern of various colors; the pattern is large, and it scarcely comes out until it is nearly complete. Our life is a complicated mosaic, and each day new shapes and new colors are added. God makes the pattern complete, but keeps it for a heaven-view.

III. THAT THE MYSTERY HANGING ABOUT THE DEATH OF OUR BELOVED WILL ONE DAY BE DISPELLED. Familiar as we are with death, its ways always seem strange to us. We think it has stricken the wrong person; it has come at the wrong time; or it has done its work in the wrong way. Sometimes Death comes too suddenly. In a moment our friend went in, and all left to us was the outer robe flung off as he passed through. Sometimes Death tarries wearyingly. Sometimes Death gathers about him circumstances which add peculiar painfulness to the death-scenes. We incline to say, "It is all wrong." And yet it is God who arranges it. The wise God. The faithful Creator. The loving Father. It is precious to him. "Thou shalt know hereafter." Let us wait. We all have some mysteries to keep until the time for unfolding mysteries shall come. By-and-by "we shall know as we are known." - R.T.

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KJV: Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of his saints.

WEB: Precious in the sight of Yahweh is the death of his saints.