IS IT OUT OF GOD’S WAY?
By Julia E. Duffie
Not long since I heard a man of good education talking on religious matters, and among other things he said, “Do you suppose the great God who makes the laws of the universe, controls the planets, &c., is going to turn out of his way to interfere with every little matter of ours?” He also said that God had made the fixed laws of nature and never deviated from them; that every result came from its natural causes; that there was no such thing as a miracle, &c. Now all should be very willing to admit that God is great. He is “terrible in majesty.” “The sea saw and fled, the earth shook and trembled.” Yet this same great Being assures us that “he humbleth himself to behold the things that are in heaven and in the earth;” that “he is a father of the fatherless and the widow’s Judge.” How much of the comfort and happiness of this life would be gone if all were to feel that God could not or would not notice or help in any trial or anxiety? Does God have so much to do that he gets tired or confused? It would not always be for his glory or our own good to do what might seem best to us. Poor old Job! afflicted as perhaps no other mortal ever was, he did not know why God dealt with him as he did; he could not see his purpose; yet he had a faith as firm as a rock, that God would bring it all right; and surely he did. Angels are spoken of as an innumerable company, and we are told that they are all ministering spirits. Nor was it out of God’s way, when a little captive maiden in a strange land honored her God, through her instrumentality to display his power in healing the proud ruler. It was not out of his way, when a little lad lay on the burning sands of the desert, dying from thirst, to send an angel to show the poor mother where to find water for her perishing child. It is not out of his way to note the fall of every sparrow, or to listen to the prayer of his weakest, humblest child. He does hear you and me when we come in an acceptable manner; and in his own good time and way he will answer. The same God, yesterday, to-day, and forever. We may still trust in the “multitude of his tender mercies.” “In the day of my trouble I will call upon thee, for thou wilt answer me.”