The sovereign decrees and allotments of Your infinite wisdom!

(John MacDuff, "Evening Incense" 1856)

"The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised!" Job 1:21

O my Father, let me feel, even amid the troublous changes of life, that what I am apt to call painful vicissitudes — are the sovereign decrees and allotments of Your infinite wisdom!

Let me rejoice that every bitter drop in the 'cup of life' — is appointed by my Heavenly Father! May I submissively drink it, saying, "May Your will be done!"

What I cannot now comprehend — be it mine to wait the disclosures of that blessed morning when, standing at the luminous portals of Heaven, I shall joyfully acknowledge that, "You have done all things well!"

I look forward to that time when all Your inscrutable dealings will be unfolded, when inner meanings and purposes now undiscerned by the eye of sense — will be brought to light, and all discovered to be full of infinite love! Other refuges may fail — but I am as secure in You, as everlasting love and wisdom and power can make me!

Blessed Jesus! I would seek to cleave closer and closer to Your cross! May I follow You, O Lamb of God — wherever You see fit to lead me. May I never feel as if I would wish one jot or tittle regarding me to be altered — when the reins of universal empire are in Your hands!