After the Frost

"Why go I mourning?" (Psalm 42:9).

Canst thou answer this, believer? Canst thou find any reason why thou art so often mourning instead of rejoicing? Why yield to gloomy anticipations? Who told thee that the night would never end in day? Who told thee that the winter of thy discontent would proceed from frost to frost, from snow and ice, and hail, to deeper snow, and yet more heavy tempest of despair? Knowest thou not that day follows night, that flood comes after ebb, that spring and summer succeed winter? Hope thou then! Hope thou ever! for God fails thee not. --C. H. Spurgeon

"He was better to me than all my hopes;

He was better than all my fears;

He made a bridge of my broken works,

And a rainbow of my tears.

"The billows that guarded my sea-girt path,

But carried my Lord on their crest;

When I dwell on the days of my wilderness march

I can lean on His love for the rest.

"He emptied my hands of my treasured store,

And His covenant love revealed,

There was not a wound in my aching heart,

But the balm of His breath hath healed.

Oh, tender and true was the chastening sore,

In wisdom, that taught and tried,

Till the soul that He sought was trusting in Him,

And nothing on earth beside.

"He guided by paths that I could not see,

By ways that I have not known;

The crooked was straight, and the rough was plain

As I followed the Lord alone.

I praise Him still for the pleasant palms,

And the water-springs by the way,

For the glowing pillar of flame by night,

And the sheltering cloud by day.

"Never a watch on the dreariest halt,

But some promise of love endears;

I read from the past, that my future shall be

Far better than all my fears.

Like the golden pot, of the wilderness bread,

Laid up with the blossoming rod,

All safe in the ark, with the law of the Lord,

Is the, covenant care of my God."