Have you ever complained about troubles you face? Have you asked God why a calamity struck you?

At least 150 years ago Henry Edward Manning, first an Anglican priest and then a Roman Catholic bishop and cardinal, observed a startling thing.

God “has kept and folded us from ten thousand ills when we did not know it: in the midst of our security we should have perished every hour… sheltered us ‘from the terror by night and the arrow that flieth by day’* – from the powers of evil that walk in darkness, from snares of our own evil will… kept us even against ourselves, and saved us even from our own undoing.” [*Psalm 91:5]

Cardinal H. E. Manning: photo credit Wikipedia

(H. E. Manning 1808-1892, in “Daily Strength for Daily Needs”, 1930, December 6 devotional.)

The worst that happens to us is only a fraction of what threatens us!

I have often had my eyes opened to my past in which I could have done terrible things, or terrible things could have happened to me, but God saved me from it or those who would have been victims of my humanity.

The way Cardinal Manning has worded this, though, opens a new reason to praise God.

No matter how bad it is, it could be worse over a longer period of time affecting more people.