Look not to your own circumstance,
To find the truth therein,
You'll see naught but evils there;
The greater power of sin.

What suffering fills the earth and sky,
What pain we all must bear,
If what we see by sight were true,
All hope would be despair.

The evil prosper and fools find gold,
While the honest are forsaken,
The loved die young in anguish,
All loves are eventually taken.

What fools we are to love the world,
How ignorant and how blind!
The world is red in tooth and nail;
Sweeter evils are like in kind.

What lust of life could satisfy,
A soul shrouded in such smog?
Folly follows toward destruction;
Walks the precipice amidst the fog.

Though Light does pierce this darkness,
Jesus Christ is His blessed name,
Provides the lasting favors for,
Those who follow in his train.

When careless thoughts abandoned are,
The mind may receive the Truth,
His Word and His Spirit testify;
They are the surest proof.

To peer into His Revelation,
Is to look on hope and heaven,
Each statement binds them all together,
Each doctrine works as leaven.

He who turns from circumstance,
To be bound by God's command,
Shall lose not heart nor vision there;
Shall never cease to stand.

And when the world of sin reveals,
It fullest measure of despair,
God's Word, which never changes,
Gives charge, and hope, and care.

Therein it speaks of God's glory,
And how it has come to men,
To cast out the kingdom of the world,
And free a people from sin.

Therein it speaks of God's power,
And how it has been spread,
To bring an everlasting King,
Who shall raise us from the dead.

Therein it speaks of God's truth,
And how it has never failed,
To bring God's own to glory,
That His name forever be hailed.

Look not to your own circumstance,
To find the truth therein,
God's Word alone speaks faithfully,
To calm the storms within.

__________________
Joshua Butcher
PCA
College Station, TX