“There was One upon whom God’s wrath pressed very sorely, One who was in truth afflicted with all God’s waves, and that One is our brother, a man like ourselves, the dearest lover of our souls.

And because He has known and suffered all this, He can enter into sympathy with us this morning whatever tribulation may beat upon us. His passion is all over now, but not His compassion.

He has borne the indignation of God, and turned it all away from us: the waves have lost their fury, and spent their force on Him, and now He sitteth above the floods, yea, He sitteth King for ever and ever.

As we think of Him, the Crucified, our souls may not only derive consolation from His sympathy and powerful succour, but we may learn to look upon our trials with a calmer eye, and judge them more according to the true standard.

In the presence of Christ’s cross our own crosses are less colossal. Our thorns in the flesh are as nothing when laid side by side with the nails and spear.”

–Charles H. Spurgeon, “For the Troubled” in The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit Sermons (vol. 19; London: Passmore & Alabaster, 1873), 16. This sermon on Psalm 88:7 was preached on January 12, 1873.