"In everything give thanks." 1Thess. 5:18

 "Surely this is a hard saying! Am I too thank God for everything? Am I to thank Him for bereavement, for pain, for poverty, for toil?

Must I lift up my hands over my dead and say, "Father, I thank You that you have taken away my friend"? Is it possible? Is it human? Is it desirable? Is it the will of Love that love should violate its own law? Is it pleasing to my Father that loss should be pleasant to me?

  Be still my soul; you have misread the message. It is not to give thanks for everything, but to give thanks in everything. It is not to praise God for the night, but to bless Him that the night is not deeper.

Consider, you have never reached the absolute depth of any darkness; you have never come to the step which has no step below it.

I read of Jesus that He gave thanks over the symbol of His broken body. What does that mean? That He rejoiced in being sad? No, but that He was not perfectly sad. It tells me that even the Man of Sorrow had not reached the uttermost sorrow.

In your hour of sorrow, give thanks like Jesus. Keep your eye, not on the step above, but on the step below-- the step to which you have not yet descended. Look not up at the height you have lost; look down on the depth you have not fallen too.

Your Father has never allowed the uttermost deep of misery to any human spirit. God never fills the cup of Jesus to the brim; there is always a vacant space reserved for light and air.

Is it not written that He has put my tears into His bottle; the quantity of your grief’s are measured; there is a line which they cannot pass? Thank God for that boundary, oh, my soul." George Matteson.