They were once like us - sorrowing, suffering, sinning!
"Oh magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt His name together!" Very wonderful have His dealings been with me, since the day when He took me by the hand to bring me out of Egypt.
We have nothing that we can properly call our own - but sin and misery!
I wish to be more thankful for what the Lord has been to me - but I long to rise a step higher still, to be enabled to contemplate His character, as displayed by the cross of Christ, so that I may continually admire and adore Him for what He is in Himself. He would have been great and glorious, wise, powerful, holy, and gracious - though I had never been brought into existence, or had been left to eternally perish in my sin as I deserved.
The redeemed before the throne - look how they shine! Hark how they sing! They were not always as they are now. They were once like us - sorrowing, suffering, sinning! But He has washed them from their sins in His own blood - and wiped away their tears with His own nail-pierced hands!
"All glory to Him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by shedding His blood for us! All glory and power to Him forever and ever! Amen." Revelation 1:5-6