the Third Week after Easter
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Daily Devotionals
Our Daily Homily - Volume 2
Psalms 31:7—Thou hast known my soul in adversities.
Men have a way of forgetting their companions when they fall into adversity. They do not know them or visit them, or recognize them if they meet them in the street. But the love of God is always most tender and considerate then. He seeks us out when the sky is shadowed, and life is overcast with somber tints. Adversity, so far from alienating Him, draws Him closer, and brings out his tenderest, loveliest traits. He knows us in adversity.
It in only when we are overtaken by adversity that we are revealed by the innermost depths of our nature. God knows us is adversity. "Thou shalt remember," said Moses, "all the way which the Lord thy God hath led thee these forty years in the wilderness, that He might humble thee, to prove thee, to know what was in thine heart" What revelations of unsubdued pride and imperious self-will are afforded, when we are searched and tested by the fiery trial of pain!
But the margin (R.V.) suggests another rendering: "Thou hast known the adversities of my soul." Is it not enough that God should know? Need we go to all our friends and explain to them all we are called to endure? Is not this a needless addition to their sorrow, and the sorrow of the world? What a glorious piece of advice the Master gave, when He said, "Anoint thine head and wash thy face, that thou appear not unto men to fast, but to thy Father which seeth in secret."
"Thou know’st our bitterness!—our joys are thine!
No stranger Thou to all our wanderings wild!
But yet Thou call’st us Brethren! Sweet repose
Is in that word;—the Lord who dwells on high
Knows all, yet loves us better than He knows."
