WHEN GREAT SORROWS COME TO OUR HOMES.
By Christian Advocate
WHEN the burdens of long-continued sickness, or the sorrows of bereavement, or other great griefs crowd, as they sometimes do, into our home life, what are we to do? Shall we yield to despair? Shall we run away from our heavenly Father? Rather, shall we not run to Him? . . . Fierce Elijah ran away from God. Moses ran away to God, and poured out his sorrow before him: "Lord, wherefore hast thou so evil entreated this people? why is it that thou hast sent me? for since I came to Pharaoh to speak in thy name, he hath done evil to this people; neither hast thou delivered thy people at all." We can understand what a bitter trial it was to have the scornful upbraiding flung at them from the lips of those whom they had been sent to deliver, to find, in place of the triumph they had expected, such cruel failure, such added misery. Thus Moses, cast down and disquieted, goes to pour out his complaint before God. The language of the forty-second psalm might as well have been his: "I will say unto God my Rock, Why hast thou forgotten me? why go I mourning because of the oppression of the enemy? As with a sword in my bones, my enemies reproach me; while they say daily unto me, Where is thy God?" Note well the answer to this depression. It is very beautiful. It is an illustration of the text: "Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him. For he knoweth our frame; he remembereth that we are dust." "Then the Lord said unto Moses, Now shalt thou see what I will do to Pharaoh; for with a strong hand shall he let them go, and with a strong hand shall he drive them out of his land. . . . I have also heard the groaning of the children of Israel, whom the Egyptians keep in bondage; and I have remembered my covenant. . . . And I will take you to me for a people, and I will be to you a God; and ye shall know that I am the Lord your God, which bringeth you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians." God is never angry with us for doubting or being depressed if our doubts and depression do but drive us to him. The only sorrow we have to fear is the sorrow that drives us from God. Have great faith in God. That which he hath promised he can, he will, he must perform.—Christian Advocate.