PRAYER AND TROUBLE.

New Zealand Tablet, 31 October 1918, Page 45

PRAYER AND TROUBLE.

Have you felt that curious unrest that envelops you when in time of distress you have tried to carry your burdens to One Who has promised us that if we ask we shall receive? Your mind whirls from one thought to another and often strange thoughts, words, and bits of disjointed sentences. You try to force yourself to calmly consider your great need so that you may the better petition the Almighty God to lift the sorrow from your soul and to give you peace. Though you desire that favor more than anything in the world, you cannot concentrate your thoughts upon it, and again your heart-aching desire is buffeted about like the wisps of grass in a storm. You begin to feel that God has hid His face from you and that He has found you unworthy of His care. You feel that God has been very hard to you in denying you health and means. But if you have the will to struggle you will reach a plane of thought that is to be compared to a beautiful upland where fragrant flowers and cooling waters seem to bloom for you and those you hope to lift out of want. Some seeker of peace out of trouble has written, “The darkest hour is just before dawn.” This old, old saying has comforted many a sad heart. . “The severer the storm, the sooner the sunshine,” bears an old and familiar bit of optimism that never fails to cheer. - A less quoted saying but none the less comforting one is this;- “God never shuts the door on your hopes but He opens -the' door to something better.”. All these sayings, and they are truths, show us. that God-loves those who persevere,

even though, brought low in /everything necessary to life. We knew an Irish mother who used to say in the darkest hours that fell upon her family, “God feeds the birds of the air,’ and ■’ those who heard her were often struck with the force of her faith, for the-expression itself undoubtedly carried a prayer with"-it that was heard on high. — (Exchange.) - ” ‘ ■'/