Trials, Daily Grace to Bear – Charles Spurgeon

OUR God does not trust us with so much life as a month at once—we live as the clock ticks, a second at a time. Is not that a wiser method of living rather than to perplex our heads by living by the month or by the year? You have no promise for the year: the word of mercy runs, “As your days your strength shall be.” You are not commanded to pray for supplies by the year, but, “Give us this day our daily bread.” Said a good man to me the other day who had many troubles, who has borne them manfully to my knowledge, for these fifteen or twenty years, when I asked him how his patience had held out—”Ah,” said he, “I said to my afflicted wife the other day, when the coals come in, it takes several big fellows to bring in the sacks, but yet our little kitchen-maid Mary, has brought the whole ton up from the cellar into our parlor; but she has done it a scuttle-full at a time. She has as surely moved those tons of coal as ever did the wagons when they brought them in, but she has moved them by little and little, and done it easily.” This is how to bear the troubles of life, a day’s portion at a time. Wave by wave our trials come, and let us breast them one by one, and not attempt to buffet the whole ocean’s billows at once. Let us stand as the brave old Spartan did, in the Thermopylae of the day, and fight the Persians as they come one by one, thus shall we keep our adversities at bay, and overcome them as they advance in single file; but let us not venture into the plain amidst the innumerable hordes of Persians, or we shall speedily be swallowed up, and our faith and patience will be overcome.