All Things Work Together for Good to Them That Love God

 •  1 min. read  •  grade level: 5
What tender, yearning solicitude for our happiness and well-being is wrapped up in those dealings of disappointment over which we so often grieve. We see but the bright beginning of the path. He looks on to the end! He sees the whirlpool of trouble into which the pursuit of such a course would inevitably lead us. And in wonderful mercy He arrests our steps as we get in Hosea 2:66Therefore, behold, I will hedge up thy way with thorns, and make a wall, that she shall not find her paths. (Hosea 2:6). He stops up our way. “I will hedge up thy way with thorns,” He says of Israel, “and make a wall that she shall not find her paths.” He frustrates our plans of earthly happiness. He disappoints our hopes; He allows nothing we do apparently to succeed. Ah! We may not see the reason now; we may fail to see love in His dealings with us; but not the less surely it is there. “Without this hedge of thorns,” says Rutherford, “on the right hand and on the left, we should hardly keep the road to heaven.”
“Our yet unfinished story,
Is tending all to this;
To God the highest glory—
To us the greatest bliss.
If all things work together,
For ends so grand and blest;
What need to wonder whether
Each in itself is best.”