This burden of ours!

(J.R. Miller, "Help for the Day")

This burden of ours is God's gift to us — and to lay it down would be to lay down a blessing. Surely it is a wiser love which puts new strength into your heart and arm, so that you can go on with your hard duty, your heavy responsibility, your weight of care, without fainting — than would be the sentimentality which would take all the load away, and leave you free from any burden.

God's purpose always is to make something of us, to bring out the best that is in us. Hence He does not clear the forest for us, but puts the axe into our own hands, and bids us to cut it down for ourselves. And while we prepare the ground for tillage — we grow healthy and strong ourselves through the toil. He does not drive out the enemies for us. He puts the sword into our own hands — and sends us to drive them out. The struggle does us good. The wrestling makes us strong.

"Moreover let us exult in our troubles and rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that pressure and affliction and hardship produce patient and unswerving endurance. And endurance develops maturity of character." Romans 5:3-4