The hour of the examination draws near, and the mind is tossed with waves of fear, imagining a future of sorrow. But tell your daughter not to look upon the lump as though it were already a master, but to look upon the Master of all flesh. The potter has power over the clay, to make one vessel for honor and another for a different use, yet we are not lifeless clay in our will; we are clay that may cry out to the Potter. Let her stretch her mind toward Heaven, let her clothe herself with that spiritual fire which consumes all terror. No one who bears this flame fears what meets them, for the flame is intolerable to the enemy of our peace, and all things retire before a soul that is girded with faith. Let her not waste this trial by fixing her eyes only on the lump, but let her use it as a lamp to see the will of God more clearly. For what is the perfection of a lamp? It is not to be finely turned, but to give light. So too, the true perfection of her life is not found in the absence of trial, but in shining brightly with trust and quicksightedness toward Heaven even when the storm is overhead.
She is a mother, and that holy office teaches her more than any sermon. Mothers, be specially careful to regulate your own soul, for you are the root, and if the root is made good, good branches will shoot forth. If she would secure a long life for her child, let her flee to the fountain of life. The thief on the cross was called in his final hour, not because God was unable to call him earlier, but because earlier he would not have obeyed. So too, this moment of fear can be the very hour in which it pleases God to separate her from a worldly trust and draw her wholly unto Himself. Let her not merely pray to be spared, but pray to be made ready to obey, whatever the answer may be. The real superiority of a Christian is not that one is always in health and another in sickness, but that even in sickness, the soul remains unchaste to the world and wedded to Christ. That is the power which makes a poor man richer than a king; for the king is in daily anxiety, fearing the loss of his supplies, but the one who possesses the fear of God has need of no one and fears about nothing, or if they fear, it is not for so great a matter as the loss of heaven.
I am in fear with you, yet not in despair. The wreck has not happened, but I see the storm big with it. Tell her to lay hold of the holy Table, where the Physician of souls and bodies is present. Do not demand an account of the Almighty or say, "Why this?" but worship and imitate the clay that follows the Potter’s hands without a word. Do this, and even now, before the hour comes, let her fears be stilled, knowing that the outcome is a dispensation from the One who separated Paul from his mother’s womb at the very moment it pleased Him. And so we pray: Lord, You who quicken the dead and call those things which be not as though they were, look upon this handmaid. If it be Your will, command this lump to be a vessel of honor in this life. But above all, give her the flame of Your Spirit that consumes the darts of the wicked one, and make her such a root of goodness to her child that, whether she stays or is called away, her household may be transformed by the leaven of her virtue. Grant her not merely length of days, but the courage to trust that in Your hand are both the quick and the dead, and to say, not with a clenched fist but with open hands, "Thy will be done."