To know that our Father in heaven has ordained our pain is not a comfoftable truth, but it is comforting. That our pain has a loving and wise and all-powerful purpose behind it is better than any other view--weak God, cruel God, bumbling God, no God. To know that in his hands "this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison" (2 Corinthians 4:17) is profoundly reassuring.

Normal Christian life is a process of restoration and renewal. Our joy is not static. It fluctuates with real life. It is vulnerable to satan's attacks.

It is true that God can be known and enjoyed in every legitimate vocation; but when he deploys you from one place to the next, he offers fresh and deeper drinking at the fountain of his fellowship. God seldom calls us to an easier life, but always calls us to know more of him and drink more deeply of his sustaining grace.

God has his ways to loosen your roots.

The secret, I said, is knowing that the same sovereignty that could stop the coronavirus, yet doesn't, is the very sovereignty that sustains the soul in it.

Of all the books which can be put into your hands, those which relate the labors and suffering of good men are the most interesting and instructive.

Job was stripped of his earthly treasures, bereaved of his children, and made a spectacle of loathing to his friends, but in God's time He showed He had not forsaken His servant.

One day's experience had been the turning point in Joseph's life. Its terrible calamity had transformed him from a petted child to a man, thoughtful, courageous, and self-possessed.

when she was pregnant, so Nan was born in a workhouse. She never talked about it, but it seemed to have left her as someone nothing could faze,

Sleep not, dream not; this bright dayWill not, cannot last for aye;Bliss like thine is bought by yearsDark with torment and with tears.

To learn patience is not to rebel against every hardship.

Redemption is not perfection. The redeemed must realize their imperfections.