Weighed, measured & timed by infinite love
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"The Lord tries the righteous." Psalm 11:5
The Lord appoints to every one of His children the peculiar path which he has to tread—and the number and weight of the burdens which he has to carry.
Whatever trial, therefore, comes, it is of the Lord. The trials with which God Himself tries His people are not only numerous and various—but for the most part of a very painful and perplexing nature—yet all precisely adapted to the nature of the case and exactly suited to the state of the person tried, as being planned by unerring wisdom—and weighed, measured and timed by infinite love!
Thus, as the God of providence—as the Maker of our bodies as well as the Creator of our souls—as the God of our families who gives and takes at will the fruit of the womb—some of His children He tries with poverty—others with sickness—others with taking away the desire of their eyes at a stroke—or cutting off the tender olive plants which have sprung up round about their table and entwined round every fibre of their heart.
How sudden also, how unexpected the trials! Heavy losses in business, a sweeping away of the little savings of a life—by some fraud or failure, trick or treachery, riches making themselves wings and flying away, and poverty and need coming in as an armed man to plunder the wreck! How suddenly do such strokes come! Sickness, also, and disease—how swift their attack!
The saints of God are not exempt from their share in these afflictions—many are either themselves stretched on beds of languishing and pain—or are watching by the side of afflicted relatives and dying children. How suddenly, also, trials of various kinds come! In one day Job, "the greatest of all the men of the east," lost all the substance which God had given—and the father in the morning of ten living children sat in the evening in his lonely house childless and desolate!
How labor pangs fell suddenly on Rachel, and the impatient mother who had cried out "Give me children or else I die," expired under the load of her coveted burden!