Therefore, beloved, bear up under it. Do not be destroyed by it. It is only for a season, and that a short one. A few years more at the worst, and it will all be over, and God's work in you accomplished for the endless ages. Death is but a moment, however long we may rest under its shadow. We shall seem to emerge instantaneously from the gloom of mortal life to the sunshine of the cloudless morn immortal. It has been thus with all the children of God. They have fallen asleep in their several generations, after their appointed taste of the tribulation, saying with Jacob, "Few and evil have been the days of the years of the life of my pilgrimage": and they will all seem to enter at once into the consolation that waits them at the appearing of Christ. The arrangement is so beautiful that while they will seem to reach the glory each at the end of his own tribulation, all will find themselves entering that glory "to gether." Thus Abraham will appear to himself to have been no longer in the grave than the brother buried the day before Christ's arrival. He will find himself transferred, as by the wave of a magic wand, from the solitariness of his old age, to the presence of his promised seed, "as the stars of the sky for multitude."

llow these things to help you in the dreary course you have meanwhile to sustain. Be assured that your steps are ordered of the Lord, and that it is no accident that has placed you where you are, and subjected you to just the particular grievances that afflict you. You will be liable to think that some other position would be better for you than the one you occupy. Don't be dismayed at this feeling. It is natural: it is inevitable. You feel the trouble of the position you are in: you cannot feel the trouble of the position you are not in. Consequently, the position you are not in will always seem more desirable than the one you are in. You think of that other position with a feeling of relief, because your blank view of it is a contrast to the actual position you are in.

Use your reason and exercise faith, and you will be resigned.

Reason will tell you that other people will regard your position precisely as you regard theirs, and for the same reason: they do not know your trouble, but only their own, and consequently they feel as if they would be free from trouble if they were only placed as you are. It is an illusion of the mind.

It is like two men on a cold day -- one walking on the road, and the other riding on the top of a conveyance. The man on the conveyance is cold and stiff, and thinks how much better off is the man on the road, having exercise; the man on the road is tired, and perhaps over-heated with a long trudge, and thinks how blissful it must be on the top of the vehicle.

There is no exemption from trouble among those who are "the called" according to the purpose of God. The part of wisdom among them all is -- not to look enviously upon a neighbour's position, but sympathetically and helpfully, in the full assurance that our brother has trouble that we know not of, and stands in need of what poor comfort a brother's sympathy can afford him. And each man, concerning his own position will say "It is the one appointed: it is the one needed: I will resign myself to it: I will grapple with its difficulties, and bear its burdens, and endure its temptations -- in all things and at all times, casting my care upon God, invoking His help in all my feeble efforts to faithfully fulfil the part assigned me in this present mortal scheme."