TRIALS FROM GOD by F. W. Hiddleson

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Aug 22, 1900

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 26, No. 34.

TRIALS FROM GOD.

By F. W. Hiddleson

THE all-important lesson for the Christian to learn is that all trials, difficulties, troubles, and losses, whatever they may be, come from God. The Christian is in God's hands, and nothing can befall him except God permit it, and "no good thing will He withhold from them that walk uprightly."

It may be that a mighty whirlwind of sorrow is bearing down upon you like that Ezekiel saw coming out of the north enfolded with fire, and it seems that you will be swept to destruction by it; but behind it and over and above it is the throne of an almighty God.

We can not see the end from the beginning, but He can, and the very thing that looks like an instrument of destruction may be a power that He is using to bring about our happiness and joy.

The storm that spans the sky, unfolding like a monster of destruction, shaking the earth with its mighty peals of thunder, and cleaving the clouds with the forked lightning, is the power that lends a new luster to grass, flower, and shrub, and is the canvas upon which a moment later God paints the rainbow.

"What I do thou knowest not now," said Jesus, "but thou shalt know hereafter." It is enough for us to know that God has the doing in charge, hence we know all is well, and that no ill can befall us.

A dark, heavy cloud hung for years over the patriarch Jacob, and as he saw the calamities coming thick and fast, shutting out the light of a happy home, we hear him saying with heart-touching sadness: "Me have ye bereaved of my children; . . . all these things are against me. . . . Then shall ye bring down my gray hairs with sorrow to the grave." These words escaped from Jacob under the pressure of having first lost Joseph, then Simeon, and now the call for Benjamin. But when the cloud was lifted, and he found the long-lost Joseph on the throne of Egypt, and he could see the workings of an all-wise God, we find him pouring out his thankfulness in these words: "I had not thought to see thy face; and, lo, God hath showed me also thy seed."

Joseph also traveled through seas of affliction. Thirteen long years the heavy shadow enshrouded him. Hated and despised by his brethren, sold by them into bondage, persecuted, and cast into prison for obeying God, and forgotten by those he had befriended, he learned well the lesson of self-abasement and humiliation; but when it was all past, when the sun broke through the gloom, the glory was so surpassingly lovely that he said to his repentant brethren as they bowed around him, in fulfilment of the vision of the sheaves: "Be not grieved, nor angry with yourselves, that ye sold me hither; for God did send me before you to preserve life. . . . So now it was not you that sent me hither, but God."

Happy the servant of God who learns that the providences of God are but the unfolding of the great plan of a wise Master Builder, and that the end of it all is the peace and happiness of His children. It is faith in God that smooths the way, and enables us to endure. John put it this way: "This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith." The faithless man can not gain the victory. The trial is not sent to help him, he thinks, but to thwart his own dear plans and purposes. He can see nothing but disaster and ruin in it. But the child of God knows "our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal."

Sad is that professed child of God who shrinks and flinches when God in His mercy sends him a trial to fit him for some useful place in His vineyard, or to prepare him for the mansion He is building.

F. W. HIDDLESON.