Here Rizpah’s love, and endurance is brought to our notice. The seven crosses to which her two sons and her five relatives were fastened, were planted in the rock on the top of the sacred hill of Gibeah. The victims were sacrificed at the beginning of barley harvest--the sacred and festal time of the Passover--and in the full blaze of the summer sun they hung till the fall of the periodical rain in October. During the whole of that time Rizpah remained at the foot of the crosses on which the bodies of her sons were exposed. She had no tent to shelter her all those months from the scorching sun which beats on that open spot all day, or from the drenching dews of night, but she spread on the rock summit the thick mourning garment of black sackcloth, which, as a widow, she wore, and, crouching there, she kept off bird and beast till their bodies could have honorable burial. At length the heroic actions of Rizpah were brought to the notice of David, who, with his usual kindness, had the bodies of Saul and his friend Jonathan brought from Jabesh-Gilead, and the bodies taken from the crosses and sepulchred in the family tomb of Kish. Rizpah, by birth was a Hivite, and probably had not the sustaining grace which God alone can give. She had trained her sons for the splendors of a court. They were cut off in their prime, and her desolate heart had only its pride to sustain her during her superhuman anguish and endurance. Her loving, passionate nature was a bright light in a rude, dark age. With such a beautiful example before us, we need never say the circumstances of our life forbid the possibilities of living for God. The blacker the cloud the brighter may be the rainbow. The harder our situation the more can our life become a protest against it. The lighthouse needs the midnight darkness and the storm-beaten shore to bring out its value and its purpose, and there is no situation so trying and difficult but God can sustain us in it, and when we have learned our lesson enable us to triumph over it.