Behind a Frowning Providence, He Hides a Smiling Face: Reflections on God Moves in a Mysterious Way

He wrote it during a solitary walk in the fields, sensing the darkness gathering in his mind. It was the last hymn he would ever write.

William Cowper composed "God Moves in a Mysterious Way" in 1773, on the edge of the depressive episode that would consume the next three years of his life and result in another attempt on his life. He wrote not from the comfort of resolved faith but from the threshold of the storm - choosing, before the darkness took him, to declare what he believed about the God who sends the clouds. The man who doubted whether God's grace extended to himself gave the church its most enduring hymn of trust in divine providence.

Behind a Frowning Providence, He Hides a Smiling Face is the sixteenth volume in the Songs of the Redeemed series. Moving stanza by stanza through Cowper's six-verse hymn, Elias Hartwell traces the full architecture of the Reformed doctrine of providence - from the God who rides the storm and fashions bright designs in unfathomable mines, to the fearful saints who need courage to trust what feeble sense cannot see, to the single most audacious claim in English hymnody: that behind every frowning providence, without exception, there is always a smiling face. Here is the bud that tastes bitter and the flower that will be sweet. Here is the God who is his own interpreter - and who will make it plain.

For the soul under a sky that has not smiled in a long time. For every fearful saint who needs a reason to take courage -

The clouds are big with mercy.