In His Time

“Christians often have occasion to remark that God’s ways are not as man’s ways, nor His thoughts as man’s thoughts.  Likewise, His measure of time oft far varies from our own estimations. This holds true in a vast variety of respects—but it holds especially true in connection with the removal of the righteous from this scene of things by the hand of death.  If the affairs of the church or the world were entrusted to the management of man, he would protract the life of the faithful to the extremest limit of human existence, and while the life was prolonged he would take care that the mind should retain all its vigor, and that the experience and public usefulness should ever enlarge.  Widely different sometimes is the Divine method of procedure. The servants of God are often unexpectedly taken away, not when enfeebled in gifts, or graces, or influence, but when their powers are most matured, their minds most thoroughly disciplined for future service, having successfully weathered trials and temptations readied by more favorable circumstances for exerting propitious influences upon men and nations.”  John Gordon Lorimer (1808-68), Pastor of Free St. David's, Glasgow