"If Need Be"

1Pe 1:6  Wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations:

1Pe 1:7  That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ:

What a blessed motto and superscription over the dark lintels of sorrow: "If need be!"

Every sharp arrow from the quiver of God is feathered with it!

Write it, child of affliction, over every trial your God sees fit to send!

If He calls you down from the sunny mountain heights to the dark glades, hear Him saying, "There is a need be!"

If He has dashed the cup of prosperity from your lips, curtailed your creature comforts, diminished your "basket and your store," hear Him saying, "There is a need be!"

If He has ploughed and furrowed your soul with severe bereavement; extinguished light after light in your dwelling; hear Him therefore stilling the tumult of your grief: "there is a need be!" 

Yes! believe it, there is some profound reason for your trial, which at present may be indiscernible. 

No furnace will be hotter than He sees needed.

Sometimes indeed, His teachings are mysterious.

We can with difficulty spell out the letters, "God is love!"

We can see no "bright light," in "our dark cloud."

It is all mystery; there is not one break in the sky!

No! Hear what God the Lord speaks: "If need be!"

He does not long leave His people alone, if He sees their chariot wheels dragging heavily.

He will take His own means to sever them from an absorbing love of the world;

To pursue them out of self;

And dislodge usurping clay idols that may have vaulted on the throne which He alone may occupy!

Before your present trial He may have seen your love waxing cold; or your influence for good, lessening.

As the sun puts out the fire, the sun of earthly prosperity may have been extinguishing the fires of your soul.

You may have been shining less brightly for Christ, effecting some guilty compromise with an insinuating and seductive world!

He has appointed this very discipline and dealing as needful to you; nothing less could have done!

Be still, and know that He is God!

That "need be," remember, is in the hands of Infinite Love, Infinite Wisdom, Infinite Power!

Trust Him in little things as well as great things; in trifles as well as tragedies!

Seek to have unquestioning faith.

Though other paths, doubtless, would have been selected by you, had the choice been in your hands...

Be it yours to listen to His voice at every turn in the road, saying, "This is the way walk in it."

We may not be able to understand it now but one day we shall come to find, that AFFLICTION is one of God's blessed angels, "sent forth to minister to those who are heirs of salvation."

Lovelier, indeed, to the eye, is the azure blue; the fleecy summer vapors, or gold and vermilion of western sunsets.

But what would become of the earth if no dark clouds from time to time hung over it; distilling their treasures, reviving and refreshing its drooping vegetable tribes?

Is it otherwise with the soul? No! The cloud of sorrow is needed.

Its every raindrop has an inner meaning of LOVE!

If, even now, afflicted one, these clouds are gathering, and the tempest sighing- lift up your eye to the divine scroll gleaming in the darkened heavens...

And remember that He who has put the Rainbow of Promise there, saw also a "need be" for the cloud on which it rests!

~John Macduff~