Hebrews 12:5-6 And you have forgotten the exhortation which speaks to you as to children, My son, despise not you the chastening of the Lord… Stonewall Jackson was once asked, "Suppose that these unprofitable eyes of yours, that give you so much trouble, should become suddenly blind, do you believe your serenity would remain unclouded?" He paused a moment, as if to weigh fully the exact measure of every word he uttered, and then said: "I am sure of it; even such a misfortune could not make me doubt the love of God." Still further to test him it was urged: "Conceive, then, that besides your hopeless blindness, you were condemned to be bedridden, and racked with pain for life; you would hardly call yourself happy then?" There was again the same deliberateness before he replied: "Yes, I think I could; my faith in the Almighty wisdom is absolute: and why should this accident change it?" Touching him upon a tender point — his impatience of anything bordering on every species of dependence — the test was pushed further. "But if in addition to blindness and incurable infirmity and pain you had to receive grudging charity from those on whom you had no claim, what then?" There was a strange reverence in his lifted eye, and an exalted expression over his whole face, as he replied with slow deliberateness: "If it was God's will, I think I could lie there content a hundred years!" (H. O. Mackey.) Parallel Verses KJV: And ye have forgotten the exhortation which speaketh unto you as unto children, My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of him: |
    |