As one moves into the summer of the Christian experience there opens before him many wonderful and charming vistas of possibilities in the new life. Truly, the heart sings and the sweet flowers are in great profusion. The heart rests and basks in the sunlight of God’s tender love, and is contented to know only songbirds and flowers and the sound of many waters. He delights to feast and rejoice in the Well-beloved.
Later, as God leads the heart on, a time of proving or testing comes. He begins to withdraw His conscious presence and, as it were, hides His face. However, He is very near, and as our faith is tested and tried we learn to abide in Him and in His faithfulness and not to depend upon any natural frame of feeling or emotion. The heart enters a process of weaning from all pleasing or delightful experiences, that it may mature in deeper and richer phases of fruitfulness.
Many times the heart inexperienced or untaught is at a loss to know the meaning of the detachment from conscious and delightful relations to find in place a dead and forlorn yet not hopeless state. The heart at first desires to retrace the steps and again find the comfort of earlier and first-found joys. But God in tenderness and love must wean the soul from the experiences of summer and teach it to rejoice in the less spectacular manifestations of autumn. The sequel of May and the reward of summer toil are now manifest.