“Be merciful to me, O God, be merciful to me! For my soul trusts in You; and in the shadow of Your wings I will make my refuge, until these calamities have passed by” (Ps 57:1).
Richard Cecil (1748–1810) was a leading British Evangelical and friend of John Newton. Wishing to teach his daughter trust in the Lord when He asks difficult things of us, he spoke to her as she sat on his knee by the fire. Did she love him enough to give up her toy necklace of glass beads, he wondered? “Yes, Papa,” she said, her lip trembling. He held out his hand, and she placed them there. “Now Papa knows you love him,” he replied as he stroked her golden hair. A few days later was her birthday, and what did she receive? Her father handed her a plush box which, when opened, revealed a little string of real pearls! “Oh, Papa,” she exclaimed, “I didn’t know why you did that—but now I do!”
How many heartaches and losses now will become rich treasures to us when at last “these calamities have passed by.”