If my days were untroubled and my heart always light

Would I seek that fair land where there is no night?

If I never grew weary with the weight of my load

Would I search for God’s peace at the end of the road?

If I never knew sickness and never felt pain

Would I reach for a hand to help and sustain?

If I walked not with sorrow and lived without loss

Would my soul seek sweet solace at the foot of the cross?

If all I desired was mine day by day

Would I kneel before God and earnestly pray?

If God sent no winter to freeze me with fear

Would I yearn for the warmth of spring every year?

I ask myself this and the answer is plain-

If my life were all pleasure and I never knew pain

I’d seek God less often and need Him much less,

For God’s sought more often in times of distress.

And no one knows God or sees Him as plain

As those who have met Him on the pathway of pain.