GOD’S thoughts are not as our thoughts; nor His ways as our ways; nor His love as our love. If we hear of a friend in distress or difficulty of any kind our first impulse is to fly to his help, and relieve him of his pressure, if possible.
But this might be a very great mistake. In place of rendering help, it might be doing serious mischief. We might actually be running athwart the purpose of God, and taking our friend out of a position in which Divine government had placed him for his ultimate and permanent profit. The love of God is a wise and faithful love; it abounds towards us in all wisdom and prudence. We, on the contrary, make the gravest mistakes, even when most sincerely desiring to do what is right and good.
Hence the urgent need of waiting much on God; and, above all things, of holding fast our confidence in His unchanging, unfailing, unerring love. He will make all plain. He will bring light out of darkness, life out of death, victory out of seeming defeat. He will cause the deepest and darkest distress to yield the very richest harvest of blessing. He will make all things work together for good, but He is never in a hurry. He has His own wise ends in view, and He will reach them in His own time and way; and, moreover, out of what may seem to us to be a dark, tangled, inexplicable maze of Providence, light will spring forth and fill our souls with praise and adoration.
C. H. M.