God's Goodness to Them that Wait
T. P. Crosse, D. C. L. Lamentations 3:25-36 The LORD is good to them that wait for him, to the soul that seeks him.… 1. Illustrate this by the case of sorrow. "The heart knoweth its own bitterness," and none knoweth it beside. Sorrow is not to be painted or described, or quite imagined. When it is heard of, it is known to be serious; when it is felt, it is found to be misery. It is often a choice heart which is thus chosen for sorrows. When the sorrow is godly, borne well by the soul which bends under it, then it brings a true turning from the past: a living faith in the promises is itself a very close communion with Christ. After such a trial we go softly all our days; so softly that we can hear those voices, unheard or unheeded before, which tell us "the Lord is good unto them that wait for Him." 2. Take, again, the case of ill-health. At first, when the health has failed, life seems to have lost its meaning. All occupations have to be changed, new and unknown expedients adopted. The patient groans in weariness, "Surely against me is he turned. He turneth His hand against me all the day." But in silent watchings and long dreary hours gleams of comfort gradually enter the soul, till at last it is found; weakness has been a sort of watchtower, with an outlook heavenward, and after many longings, many sighs and prayers, we have seen and felt on the sick bed that "the Lord is good unto them that wait for Him, unto the soul that seeketh Him." 3. We might take other and frequently recurring cases in the anxiety of business — the feeling that one has a too heavy work to do, that one is bound to a career which is not congenial, has to do what one is not adapted for, or placed where one is not best placed, that one has not the necessary means, openings, or conditions of success, no certainties in the future, no prospect of really advancing, or eventually holding one's own, that one cannot get one's family well out in life, that if we are taken away we know not what will become of them. How many have to watch for bad tidings which are already pluming the wing for a heavy flight, to sit about with a sinking heart where they would long to be near to help! When such trial is upon us, our heart complains with the unreasoning sincerity of suffering, "Thou hast remove a my sore far off from peace; I forget prosperity." We forget prosperity in trial, as we forget the Giver of good gifts in prosperity; we do not regard what we had or what is left to us; we see that, and only that, which is taken away. Then the school hour begins, and the lessons, at first irksome, are settled down to at last. The Christian comes to a more patient docile waiting upon God, a remembrance mat man does not live by bread alone; that the hand which clothes the flower and feeds the bird will not forget us; that our issues are with Him, and that, if our prosperity has grown poor, Jesus was poorer; that our true riches lie hid in His. salvation. 4. Take the case of the besetting sin, known, deplored, wrestled with, yet besetting still; a thorn in the spirit, buffeting and laying low — the contrasting shadow of our better self following us year after year along life's road — a breach in the battlements of the inner life, where the enemy at his will cometh in as a flood. Wait; bear on; by and by your infirmity will heal up, and the Lord will so lift the load that in a day you may be free from it forever. 5. Or, take the trial of religious doubt — the shadow of the intellect projected on the page, discord in the ear, and therefore the music out of tune. Why does not the system which has satisfied the most gifted satisfy us? Why does not the path where the most gracious have walked secure give me some ease? I wish to do service, but there again intrudes upon me the irritating problem. My difficulty is nothing to another; his difficulty is none to me; yet. there we are, both in difficulties alike. "So all these things worketh God oftentimes with man," and His object is still the same: to bring back his soul from the pit to be enlightened with the light of the living. (T. P. Crosse, D. C. L.) Parallel Verses KJV: The LORD is good unto them that wait for him, to the soul that seeketh him. WEB: Yahweh is good to those who wait for him, to the soul that seeks him.