December 20

Thou canst do curry thing. — Job xlii. 2.

With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible. MATT. xix. 26.

WE mortals are continually “troubled about many things.” Our responsibilities, perplexities, and crosses are so many and so overwhelming that failure and loss seem inevitable, as we cry concerning life’s problem, “With men this is impossible.” Yet back of the single, apparently meaningless stitches we are weaving into life’s pattern, there is a plan, simple, wise, divine. Near the weary worker stands one ready to transmute the plain, coarse metal of human love and toil into the shining gold of divine acceptance. By the bedside of the sufferer wasting under the power of disease is one whose touch will soon release the imprisoned spirit and soothe the aching flesh, and afterwards reunite body and spirit in glorified manhood forever. Beside the dark open grave, into which our hopes and affections often seem to be hurrying, stands the Conqueror of death and the grave, ready to brighten our pathway down into the valley, and to open for us on the other side a glorious path up the heavenly heights.

There is, there can be, no distress so great, no emergency so sudden, no enemies so strong, as to defeat or mar the plans of our strong One. While we listen to these words of Jesus, “With God all things are possible,” we may also hear him saying, “All things are possible to him that believeth.”

John C. Van Deventer.

Lord, we pray, and know thou hearest,

For thy promises are true!

Grant the heart-wish that is dearest;

He who knows can also do!

SYMINGTON.