TRUST by John G. Whittier

Seventh-Day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Thursday, February 12, 1880

TRUST

By John G. Whittier

A picture memory brings to me: I look across the years, and see Myself beside my mother's knee.

I feel her gentle hand restrain My selfish moods, and know again A child's blind sense of wrong and pain.

But wiser now, a man gray grown, My childhood's needs are better known, My mother's chastening love I own.

Gray grown, but in our Father's sight A child still groping for the light To read his works and ways aright.

I bow myself beneath his hand; That pain itself for good was planned. I trust, but cannot understand.

I fondly dream it needs must be That, as my mother dealt with me, So with his children dealeth he.

I wait, and trust the end will prove That here and there, below, above, The chastening heals, the pain is love.

—John G. Whittier.