The Christian Struggling Under Great and Heavy Affliction

When at length your turn comes, as it certainly will, from the first hour in which an affliction seizes you, realize to yourself the hand of God in it, and lose not the view of him in any second cause, which may have proved the immediate occasion. Let it be your first care to "humble yourself under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time." (1 Pet. 5:6) Own that "he is just in all that is brought upon you," (Neh. 9:33) and that in all these things "he punishes you less than your iniquities deserve." (Ezra 9:13) Compose yourself to bear his hand with patience, to glorify his name by a submission to his will, and to fall in with the gracious design of his visitation, as well as to wait the issue of it quietly, whatsoever the event may be.