Blessed Adversity

Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither: the LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD. JOB 1:21

Few Christian teachers have earned the right to speak about suffering as fully as Hudson Taylor. He buried his daughter Grace in 1867, his son Samuel early in 1870, a newborn son that summer, and his wife Maria a few days later. He saw his mission attacked by a mob at Yangzhou and slandered in Parliament. He lived to hear that in the Boxer rising of 1900 fifty-eight of his missionaries and twenty-one of their children had been killed. His second wife, Jennie, died of cancer in 1904. He knew illness, exhaustion and seasons of deep depression. When he speaks of blessed adversity, he is not speaking from a comfortable study.

His fullest teaching on the subject is an address called Blessed Adversity, a companion to his meditation on the first psalm, Blessed Prosperity. Its text is Job.

A trustworthy child

Taylor begins with a point many miss. It was not Satan who first challenged God about Job. It was God who drew Satan’s attention to His servant: Hast thou considered my servant Job? God bore witness that there was none like him in the earth, and allowed him to be tested to vindicate the power of His grace.

This leads Taylor to a thought that transforms trial. Satan, he says, often harasses believers in sorrow by suggesting that God is angry with them, that this is punishment for some unknown offence. But Scripture shows God more like a glad father who encourages a strong son to attempt some hard athletic feat or difficult examination, knowing he will gain lasting honour by it. So “our Heavenly Father delights to trust a trustworthy child with a trial” through which he may bring great glory to God and receive enlargement of heart.

My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations; Knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience. JAMES 1:2–3

Taylor does not mean that every suffering is a compliment, and it would be cruel to say so to a grieving person. But for many believers weighed down by the fear that their trials prove God’s displeasure, his words are a release. Job’s sufferings were declared by God Himself to be without cause in his life. They were not punishment. They were a trust.

The postman and the writer

The heart of the address is Taylor’s answer to a question: when Job said, The LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away, was he mistaken? Should he not have said that Satan had taken away? No, Taylor answers. Satan knew that none but God could touch Job; he asked God to put forth His hand. When Satan was allowed to afflict Job, Job was right to recognise the Lord as the One who permitted it. “Satan is servant, and not master.”

The cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it? JOHN 18:11

Then comes one of his most memorable images. Judas betrayed Christ with a kiss, yet our Lord did not stop at Judas, nor at the enemy who filled Judas’s heart. He spoke of the cup His Father had given Him. How much resentment, Taylor says, would be removed if we could take an injury from the hand of a loving Father instead of looking chiefly at the agent through whom it came. “It matters not who is the postman — it is with the writer of the letter that we are concerned.”

This is strong medicine. Taylor does not say that evil is good, or that wicked men are not responsible for their wickedness. Judas was guilty; the Boxers who murdered children were guilty. What he says is that nothing reaches a child of God except by the permission of a Father who will bring good out of it. “Come joy, or come sorrow, we may always take it from the hand of God.”

The hedge and the leak

Taylor also has practical counsel for those in trouble. Satan found a hedge around Job that he could not break. Is there a spiritual equivalent today? Yes, Taylor says, and he finds its conditions in Philippians 4: rejoicing in the Lord, a yielding gentleness, and bringing everything to God by prayer with thanksgiving. Then the peace of God will keep our hearts and minds like a garrison.

Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God. PHILIPPIANS 4:6

Why do so many believers miss that peace? His answer is searching: “We may bring nine difficulties out of ten to Him, and try to manage the tenth ourselves.” That one reserved difficulty, like a small leak that runs a ship dry, or a small breach in a city wall, lets the enemy in.

Light out of darkness

Job’s story ends in restoration: his possessions doubled, and ten children given again. Taylor notes a tender detail. The flocks were doubled, but the number of children was not, because those who had died were not lost; they had only gone before. Job had learned, through his trial, to know God by sight and not by hearsay.

I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee. JOB 42:5

“Light out of darkness is God’s order,” Taylor writes, and he ends with a promise: that if our heavenly Father can trust us with a trial, “it is a sure presage that, if by grace the trial is accepted, He will ere long trust us with a blessing.” In Blessed Prosperity he says the same from the other side: “the path of real prosperity will often lie through deepest suffering.” And in Union and Communion, meditating on the words Many waters cannot quench love, he writes that suffering, pain, bereavement and loss may test the constancy of divine love in the believer’s heart, but they will not quench it.

Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it. SONG OF SOLOMON 8:7

What Taylor did not say

It would be dishonest to make Taylor sound serene in all his sorrows. In the weeks after Maria’s death he cried to the Lord twenty times a day. He is remembered as saying, in the dark summer of 1900, that he could not read, or think, or even pray, but that he could trust. That is not the language of a man above suffering. It is the language of a man holding on.

His teaching is therefore not that the Christian should feel no pain, but that pain is not the last word. The shadow, as he says in A Full Reward, is but the shadow of His wing.

He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust: his truth shall be thy shield and buckler. PSALM 91:4

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. If you are suffering, reject the suggestion that it must mean God is angry with you. Read Job 1 and 2 and notice who began the conversation.

2. Think of an injury someone has done you. Try to look past the postman to the Writer, without excusing the wrong.

3. Name the tenth difficulty, the one you have kept to manage yourself, and bring it to God with thanksgiving.

4. If someone near you is grieving, do not offer them a formula. Sit with them, pray for them, and trust God with the rest.

5. Write down one way in which a past trial led you to know God by sight rather than by hearsay.

A PRAYER

Father, You gave, and You have taken away. Help me, as You helped Job and Your servant Hudson Taylor, to bless Your name in both.

When I am tempted to think You are angry with me, remind me that You may be trusting me with a trial.

Teach me to look past the messenger to the One who permits all things and will bring good out of them.

And when I can no longer read, or think, or even pray, give me grace still to trust. Amen.