How can we thankful be for everything
Which comes into the heart's experience —
Life's disappointments, discords, griefs, which fling
A pall around our joy and drive it hence?
Can we be thankful when the world is sad,
Wracked with the pain of sorrow, want and fear,
Sin and destruction? Can the heart be glad
When men are losing all that life holds dear?
I ponder, and the answer comes with light:
In everything give thanks—not for the sin,
The blackness, and the terror of the night;
But in the midst of evil's wrath and din
We can stand firm, knowing its claims are nought.
Truth, understood, dispels their seeming power;
And in this wisdom, with salvation fraught.
We can give thanks in every testing hour.
