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If we could see beyond today
As God can see;
If all the clouds should roll away,
The shadows flee;
O'er present griefs we would not fret.
Each sorrow we would soon forget,
For many joys are waiting yet
For you and me.
If we could know beyond today
As God doth know,
Why dearest treasures pass away
And tears must flow;
And why the darkness leads to light,
Why dreary paths will soon grow bright;
Some day life's wrongs will be made right,
Faith tells us so.
"If we could see, if we could know,"
We often say,
But God in love a veil doth throw
Across our way;
We cannot see what lies before,
And so we cling to Him the more,
He leads us till this life is o'er
Trust and obey.
Though it'd been sitting on my shelf for years, I didn't begin to read the book Streams in the Desert until it was commended to me by a lady I met in a nursing home. I had met her many months earlier, & each time I saw her she was constantly tending to the needs of her husband who was a resident there receiving rehabilitation due to a severe stroke that left him half-paralyzed & mostly unable to speak.
As I read the book according to its dated entry for each day of the year, I think of the old couple in the nursing home at times, & feel a sense of solidarity with them as we each face quite difficult struggles of life. Recently as I was speaking to another sister-in-Christ who is my patient about some of her painful problems, she quoted to me what she was learning from Streams in the Desert, which she was reading in Arabic (the classic book, originally published in 1925, has been translated into many languages). There was a joyful moment of expanded solidarity that day in my clinic as we briefly shared how much God has been using this book to minister to our needs.
It is humbling to know I am part of this great organism called the Church, & that God uses us -- old & young, of widely varied cultures -- to minister to one another in His name.
