26 His hand which smites us!
"The Lord comforts His people and will have compassion on His afflicted ones!" Isaiah 49:13.
Many are the afflictions of the righteous—but the Lord delivers him out of them all.
Afflictions are as necessary for us—as the winter frosts are for the earth. In affliction—we often feel desolate, we are tempted to think that the Lord deals harshly with us, that He has turned against us. But nothing can be more incorrect!
Afflicted Christian, your God will have compassion upon you! He will support you in your trial, He will cause it to work your good, and He will bring you out of it as soon as it has answered the gracious design with which He sent it.
While you are in the furnace—He sits by as the Refiner, and He will see to it, that you shall lose nothing but dross!
Believe that God has sent your present trial in love, that He does not afflict you willingly—but that there is a needs-be for it, though you cannot perceive what it is at present.
"It was good for me to be afflicted—so that I might learn your decrees!" Psalms 119:71