Marah is in itself never pleasant. The Christian’s spirit with regard to all the sorrow and sin that is in the world can never be apathy, never indifference. We are never placed in a position in which we should not be sensitive to the scene we are passing through. On the contrary, we are in the very position in which we shall feel it. It is as redeemed we come to Marah. It is as having been brought through the sea that we have to drink it.

But God has a remedy: “The Lord showed him a tree. When he cast it into the waters, the waters were made sweet.” We know this tree. Surely it is a simple fact that the cross of Christ makes what is bitter sweet to us. It is the fellowship of His sufferings, and the knowledge of suffering with Him. We have the reality of His sympathy with us. We have communion with Himself in such a way as we could not else enjoy, for nothing brings hearts together like sharing a common lot of toil and sorrow.

The cross was not only that upon which atonement was wrought, but it was also the end of His whole sorrowful pathway which He had been steadfastly pursuing from the first moment of His entrance upon the path. In that sense, the cross is that which we may bear with Him. It is linked with the glory, as what characterizes our path now. We follow a rejected Master. We are made partakers of His sufferings—sufferings which are peculiar to us as His followers—not the experience of what falls to the common lot of men. If we suffer with Him, we shall also reign with Him. If we endure shame or rejection for Him, the sweet reality of being thus linked with Him makes Marah sweet.