When troubles come, we need to process them like Christian women. Grief over the loss of a loved one is trouble indeed, and it is important for Christian women to take heed to their souls in the midst of such trouble.

We have a Savior, and we believe that He governs the world with wisdom in every last detail. This means that we can rest in His kindness, even (or I should say, especially) in the midst of troubles and griefs.

The Christian woman must consider her grief something she needs to exercise good stewardship over. God has entrusted her with an affliction, a hardship, a trial, or a grief because He loves her and means it for her soul’s good. Therefore, she should seek to honor and glorify God in her troubles.

This requires much faith and courage; it means believing God’s promises. The Puritans are exceptional when it comes to teaching in this area. Not only were they saturated in God’s Word, but they were well practiced in bearing hardships. Consider these few jewels from Samuel Rutherford (a Scots Presbyterian in the Puritan era, one of the commissioners at the Westminster Assembly):

Our best fare here is hunger.

It is our heaven to lay many weights and burdens upon Christ.

Read and spell right, for He knoweth what He doth; He is only lopping and snedding [pruning] a fruitful tree, that it may be more fruitful.

Send a heavy heart up to Christ, it shall be welcome.

I bless the Lord, that all our troubles come through Christ’s fingers, and that He casted sugar among them; and casteth in some ounce weights of heaven and of the spirit of glory in our cup.

One of the heavy trials parents bear is the loss of a child. Consider these words of Rutherford’s:

Take no heavier lift of your children, than your Lord alloweth; give them room beside your heart, but not in the yolk of your heart, where Christ should be; for then they are your idols, not your bairns. If your Lord take any of them home to His house before the storm come on, take it well, the Owner of the orchard may take down two or three apples off His own trees, before midsummer, and ere they get to harvest sun; and it would not be seemly that His servant, the gardener, should chide Him for it. Let our Lord pluck His own fruit at any season He pleaseth; they are not lost to you, they are laid up so well, as that they are coffered in heaven, where our Lord’s best jewels lie.

And finally, just one more:

I know no sweeter way to heaven, than through free grace and hard trials together, and one of these cannot well want another.

00