Your cry for mercy concerning this transfer has been heard and we have carried it before the Lord in prayer.
We understand the heaviness of waiting since your application, and the trial of seeing favour shown to others while your own need, to be near your children, remains unanswered. It is a sore exercise of patience, and we pray that grace may keep you as it kept Job, of whom it is written, In all this Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly. When the heart is tried by delay and by the tricks of men, the temptation is to speak unadvisedly or to grow bitter, but the Lord is able to uphold you so that you keep right with Him through it all.
Remember how Job was brought low and yet found a more vivid apprehension of God, and how at the last it is written, The Lord turned the captivity of Job when he prayed for his friends. Our longest sorrows have a close, and there is a bottom to the profoundest depths of our misery. The night shall not hang its darkness forever over our souls. God had His end in Job, that Satan might be defeated and His servant might be refined, and He has His wise and loving end in your waiting also.
We have prayed that the Lord in His mercy would look upon your case, that He would move the heart of those in authority to act justly and without partiality, and that if it be His good will for you and for your children, He would open the way for this transfer from where you are to where your family dwells. We have asked that He would give you favour where favour is needed, and that He would keep you from all crooked ways, that you may commit your cause to Him who judges righteously and who comes with all His soul most heartily to display His favour toward His people.
Take your approach unto the Lord in childlike confidence even when He seems to frown, and continue in patient prayer. Do your duty faithfully where you are, leave your reputation and your request in His hands, and abhor all murmuring. Whether the answer be to grant the transfer or to provide another and better provision for you and your children, may you be enabled to say with Job, though He reveal but the skirts of His robe, yet will I trust Him.
We will continue to pray with you, that the Lord would show you mercy in this matter, order your steps, and cause all things to work together for your good and for His glory. May He who dwells above be your refuge, and underneath be the everlasting arms, till He shall turn your captivity and give you rest in His appointed place.
Our Father in heaven, look in mercy upon this thy servant who desires to be with his children. Thou seest the application made and the silence that has followed, and Thou knowest the devices of men. Grant justice where there has been partiality, grant patience in waiting, and grant that which is best according to Thy wisdom. Provide for this household, keep these little ones, and let Thy will be done in this matter of work and dwelling. Hear our prayer for Christ's sake. Amen.
