HOW TO LOOK AT THINGS by G. F. Pentecost

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Dec 1, 1881

HOW TO LOOK AT THINGS.

By G. F. Pentecost

I WENT to see a lady once who was in deep trouble and in great darkness on account of the great afflictions which had come to her from the hand of the Lord. She had fallen into deep melancholy. When I went in she was working on a bit of embroidery, and as I talked with her, she dropped it wrong side up, and there it lay, a mass of crude work, tangled, everything seeming out of order.

'Well,' said I, 'what is this you are engaged at?' 'Oh,' she replied it's for a Christmas gift.' I said, 'I should not think you would waste your time on that. It looks tangled, without design or meaning,' and I went on abusing the combination of colors, and so on.

'Why, Mr. Pentecost,' she said, surprised at the sudden and abrupt change of the subject on which we had before been talking, and the persistency with which I had opposed her work—'why, Mr. Pentecost, you are looking at the wrong side. Turn it over.' Then I said, 'That's just what you are doing; you are looking at the wrong side of God's workings with you. Down here they seem tangled, but up there he is working from the right side.' Down here we are looking at the tangled side of God's providence; but he has a plan, here a stitch, there a movement of the shuttle, and in the end there is a beautiful work. Be not afraid, only believing. Believe him in the darkness; believe him in the mysteries. Let him that walketh in darkness, and seeth not the light, yet trust in the Lord.—G. F. Pentecost.