If any of you, beloved, seem to be in a knot of difficulty of which you cannot get the thread, look to Him who is perfect wisdom, and let the tangle go out of your hands into His; turn the matter over to Him. What is impossible with you is perfectly possible with Him who is Almighty!

A little child at mother’s knee Plies woolen strands and needles bright. Small, eager hands strive earnestly To fasten every stitch aright. But soon perplexing knots appear Which vex and hinder progress’ flow; Impatient fingers pull and tear, While ever worse the tangles grow. How surely then in wiser hands The roughest places are made plain! How easy now the task’s demands, How wonderful the lesson’s gain! Thus, God, we bring our snarls to Thee; Though human sense and stubborn will Oft clamor loud for mastery, We hear alone Thy “Peace, be still.” EDITH SHAW BROWN

How tangled some of our problems do become as the days pass and no way appears by which the matter may be straightened out! Perhaps we have been keeping the problems too much in our own hands. No wonder, then, we cannot find the beginning or the end of the line, or how to loosen the knotted strand in just the right places. A young man writing to his father about a personal problem says: “Once again, just yesterday, I have put this whole matter in the Lord’s hands, and asked Him to guide me about it all. I often think of how I’d get my fishing line all tangled up. The more I pulled the worse it got. Finally I’d hand the whole thing over to you, and you’d smooth it all out. So I generally do that with my problems now; and I’m trying to learn not to pull at the line much, before I give it to Him.” Have you been pulling at the line in that problem that troubles you today? Just hand it over to your heavenly Father, and see how swiftly and lovingly He will untangle the crisscross and knotty impossibility that has troubled you so! SUNDAY SCHOOL TIMES

With thoughtless and Impatient hands We tangle up The plans The Lord hath wrought. And when we cry In pain, He saith, “Be quiet, dear, While I untie the knot.”

I know your manifold transgressions and your mighty sins.—I have laid help upon one that is mighty.—The Lord . . . thy Saviour and thy Redeemer, the mighty one of Jacob.—Mighty to save.—Able to keep you from falling.—Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound.

He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.—He is able . . . to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him.

Is my hand shortened at all, that it cannot redeem?

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? . . . I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Have faith in God.—Without faith it is impossible to please God.—With God all things are possible.

Is my hand shortened at all, that it cannot redeem? or have I no power to deliver?

My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.

Prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.

Behold, the Lord's hand is not shortened, that it cannot save; neither his ear heavy, that it cannot hear.—Lord, it is nothing with thee to help, whether with many or with them that have no power.

We should not trust in ourselves, but in God which raiseth the dead.