"He was with the wild beasts, and the angels ministered to Him. Mark 1:13

 "It was a meeting of extremes - the wild beasts and the angels! Two ends of the ladder of creation rested on the Son of Man! His human nature had never been so lowly, so near the ground. He was experiencing what we all at times experience -- a sense of the desert. The sheen had faded from the waters of Jordan; the dove had departed; the crowd had deserted; again as in his infancy He was with the beasts of the field. Yet it was now again that the angels came. It is always in His depression that I read of the angels coming -- when he was in the manger, in the wilderness and in the garden. Why do they come in His depression? Is it because there is a virtue in depression? No, the reverse -- because there is a danger in it. 

God will not let me have a cross without the alabaster box; He fears the effect on me of unqualified pain.

There is not in all His providence a night without a star. He plants a flower on every grave, and that flower is the boundary line beyond which grief cannot go. Therefore it is O God, that I do not die. I could not have lived with the wild beasts if the angels did not come. I have often marveled that I did not die in the desert. When I saw it from afar I said, "I could not live there." Yet I have passed through, and my life is preserved. O God I need your staff in the valley, your rose in the desert, your star in the night, your voice in the storm, your angel with the beasts of the field." George Matheson.