When was there ever, before or after, an attitude like this? From Bethlehem’s manger to Calvary’s cross, storm clouds gathered ever more darkly around Him till they burst over Him as He uttered His expiring cry. Yet, throughout all this most suffering of all lives of suffering, no murmur escaped His lips. There was only uncomplaining submission.

Is this mind also in you? Ah, what are your trials compared to His and your ripples of woe with the waves and billows that swept over Him? His sufferings were never once the result of His own guilt or sin as our severest sufferings often are! He accepted whatever His Father ordained, saying, “Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in Your sight” (Mt. 11:26). Afflicted one, take this word of the Lord and make it, as He did, the secret of your resignation.

A sick child will take the bitterest medicine from a father’s hand. Let us be willing to lie passive in the arms of His love, exulting in the assurance that all His actions are never arbitrary but that, in them all, there is a gracious “if need be” (1 Pet. 1:6). Drinking deeply of the Lord’s sweet spirit of submission, you will be able to meet, yes, even to welcome, your sorest trial, saying, “Yes, Lord, it is well because it is Your blessed will. Take me, chasten me as seems good in Your sight, even though I cannot see the ‘why and the wherefore’ of it.” The stricken soul honors God by being silent in the midst of dark, perplexing dealings, recognizing in these the training we need for a sorrowless, sinless, and deathless world!