Grace Quotes

(Octavius Winslow, "No Night There") Our journey is often dark, long, and weary. In the present life our path is at times draped with gloomy, painful, and inexplicable clouds. "God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform." So strange in shape, somber in hue, and crushing in effect, are often the events and circumstances of our personal history, that we are stunned and appalled, paralyzed and awed at the 'thick darkness' in which our God moves; at the overshadowing cloud which He makes His chariot; wondering where the scene will end. What prophet will explain to us the handwriting upon the wall? Who will interpret the symbols of an event that has suddenly plunged us in a world of mystery? God is speaking to us from the 'secret place of thunder.' He has . . . nipped the bursting bud, plucked the lovely flower, broken the graceful sapling, uprooted the strong oak, sowing life's landscape with the snowflakes of winter, congealing all its flowing springs, and tincturing all its sweet rivers with the bitterness of Marah. Like Moses, we are awed into silence by these dreadful emblems of His majesty and power, and wrapping our faces in our mantle, bow our heads in reverence to the ground. Heaven bids us look beyond the present scene of suffering and sorrow to that glorious world where shall be no drapery of dark and mysterious providences. In that glorious world, we shall . . . read all the lessons of His love, interpret all the symbols of His providence, understand all the mysteries of His dealings. How wise will then appear all the way our covenant God led us . . . through the wilderness, across the desert, home to Himself! We shall then see that . . . every dispensation was right, every stroke needed, every step an advance in our heavenly ascent, and that every cloud that veiled God's love, was one of its truest and holiest expressions. And until this 'night of mystery' passes, ushering in the 'perfect day' whose sunny sky no providential clouds will ever darken; let us resolve all our Heavenly Father's dealings into infinite wisdom, rectitude, and goodness, fully assured that, "as for God, His work is perfect."