Psalms 31:7

I will be glad and rejoice in Thy mercy, for Thou hast considered my trouble.

Divine chastisements

I. That the souls of all God’s people must have their day of adversity, This, indeed, follows from the universal methods by which God governs and upholds the world. The present life is not a state of retribution, or a place where God professes to discriminate visibly between the good and the evil. If God make His sun to shine both on the just and the unjust, what shall forbid His judgments from alighting also on both?

II. whatever our troubles may be there is one to consider our calamities and to know how long we can bear them, “Thou hast considered and known my soul in adversities.” Affliction often appears to move both God and man; it moves God to consider man’s infirmities, and it moves man to consider his own soul. Behold, then, why we “count them happy which endure”--because endurance has a tendency to bring God and the sinner together. Prosperity, health, and comfort too often form a great gulf betwixt us and God--a gulf which must either be crossed by a bridge of sighs, or else filled up with the fragments of those earthly idols which our hearts had worshipped instead of God. And when the poor sinner is thus brought unto God, the first petition he prefers is, “Lord, consider my affliction; look upon my distress; let Thine eye fasten itself upon my misery and pain.” For his faith tells him all will be well, if God can be brought to take notice of his low estate. Our faith in the Divine promises warms and brightens by the very earnestness with which we plead them; we move God to pity, by moving ourselves to feel that we need pity, and are enabled to draw nigh to God, by the very act of asking God to “draw nigh to us.”

III. that our heavenly Father’s consideration of the troubles of his people should supply us with matter for joy and praise. “I will be glad and rejoice in Thy mercy.” We are all more forward to ask for blessings than we are to render God thanks when we have received them. Ten lepers would ask the Saviour for health, but one alone returned to thank Him for it. A day could be taken from our labours to humble ourselves under a scourge, but a day could not be afforded to return thanks for our deliverance. Brethren, this backwardness in thanksgiving ought not so to be. We are hastening to a world where praise is all we shall have to do, and it surely were but fitting that we should begin our rehearsal now. Here we can forbear, and hope, and believe, and pray; but what room will there be for such like works in heaven? (Daniel Moore, M. A.)