“Giving thanks
always for all things onto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus
Christ” (Eph. 5:20).

            It is easy to
give thanks for the pleasing things. He would be ungrateful indeed, who, after
having brought his petition to the Lord for some good thing and having had it
abundantly answered, failed in the grace of gratitude and did not bow in
thanksgiving before God. But to give thanks when everything seems to go awry;
when bereavement and sorrow come into the life; when misunderstanding and false
reports cause poignant anguish; when disappointments and perplexities seem to
crush the heart and trouble the mind so that one hardly knows even how to pray;
then, indeed, it is only the manifold grace of God controlling the inmost being
that enables one to give thanks. And yet if we realize that we are but pupils
in God’s school where He is preparing us for service in the ages to
come—service that will be beyond our highest expectations, we may well praise
Him even in the midst of deepest trial. We are keeping our knightly vigil amid
the darkness and the cold, preparatory to being honored by the King of kings in
the coming day. We may rest assured that He will not permit one trial too many
or one sorrow too great.

            We are told in
the book of Proverbs that “the refining pot is for silver and the furnace for
gold, but the Lord tries the hearts” (Prov. 17:3). And, blessed be His name, He
sits by the refining pot and watches intently until He sees His own countenance
reflected in the molten silver. He walks in the midst of the fire with His own;
and the furnace, though heated seven-fold, can but burn away the bonds, or, to
change the figure, purge the dross from the gold. With that glorious Fourth One
with them, the Hebrew children did not even have the smell of fire upon their
garments.

            The trusting soul
may well rest upon the promise:“When you pass through the waters, I will be
with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow you:when you walk
through the fire, you shall not be burned; neither shall the flame kindle upon
you” (Isa. 43:2).

            Our blessed Lord
Himself is our great Example in this as in all else. He could and did give
thanks in the hour of deepest trial. In Matthew 11 and Luke 10 we see Him
rejected of men, grieving over the cities in which His mightiest works had been
accomplished and which had yet refused His message. With the dark shadows of
the cross already falling across His path we read, “At that time”—when all was
darkest and He had unutterable anguish to look forward to—“Jesus rejoiced in
spirit and said, Father, I thank Thee” (Luke 10:21). Oh, for grace to imitate
Him in this attitude, not only of subjection to the will of God but in
receiving the heaviest trials from the Father’s hand, knowing that all is for
eventual blessing.

            “Whether joy
or whether trial,

            All can only
work for good.”

            We may rest
assured that no trial will ever come to one of His own for which He did not see
a needs-be. And,

            “When we stand
with Christ in glory,

            Looking o’er
life’s finished story,”

we will understand as we
cannot now, and we shall praise Him then as we will wish we had praised Him in
the midst of the fire.

            (From Help and
Food, Vol. 46.)