God is a very present help in trouble, but we can let bitterness
keep Him at a distance and miss His help.

Young Joseph Scriven was deeply
in love with a beautiful young woman. The marriage plans had been made. While they were awaiting their wedding day, she was drowned. For months he was bitter, in utter despair. At last he turned to Christ, and through His grace came peace and comfort. Out of this experience he wrote that beloved hymn which has brought peace and comfort to millions of distraught and aching hearts: “What a Friend we have in Jesus, All our sins and griefs to bear!”

Sometimes life’s way is a sunlit road. It was so for Joseph Scriven as he approached his wedding day. But there are times when our way leads through the dark waters of loss, disappointment, sorrow.

In all of our trials and sorrows, it is within our power to turn them all into occasions for a firmer grasp of God, and so to make them channels through which a surer and brighter hope may flow into our souls.

Business losses, the troubles that lay us low, the sorrows that rob our homes of their light, are turned into a blessing to those who by them become the less attached to the earth and the more attached to God.

Trouble will not hurt you unless it does what, alas! Many of us too often allow it to do--unless it hardens you, makes you sour, bitter and skeptical.

The trouble we bear trustfully brings to us a new vision of God, and in consequence thereof a new outlook on life.

If we make our sorrow an occasion for learning more of God’s love and of His power to aid and bless, then it will teach us to have a firmer confidence In His providence; and the result of this will be to fill the sky of our life with a brighter sun.

Trust with a childlike dependence on God, and no trouble can destroy you. Even in that last dark hour of death, when “your flesh and your heart fail,” you will be able still to rely with peace upon Him who has said, “I will be the strength of thy heart and thy portion for ever” (Ps. 73: 26).