Testimony Treasures, Volume 1 - Ellen G. White

providence has afflicted individuals to test and prove others. Widows and
invalids are in the church to prove a blessing to the church. They are a part of
the means which God has chosen to develop the true character of Christ's
professed followers and to call into exercise the precious traits of character
manifested by our compassionate Redeemer.
Widows, Orphans, and Invalids
Many who can but barely live when they are single, choose to marry and
raise a family when they know they have nothing with which to support
them. And worse than this, they have no family government. Their whole
course in their family is marked with their loose, slack habits. They have but
little control over themselves, and are passionate, impatient, and fretful.
When such embrace the message, they feel that they are entitled to assistance
from their more wealthy brethren; and if their expectations are not met, they
complain of the church and accuse them of not living out their faith. Who
must be the sufferers in this case? Must the cause of God be sapped, and the
treasury in different places exhausted, to take care of these large families of
poor? No. The parents must be the sufferers. They will not, as a general
thing, suffer any greater lack after they embrace the Sabbath than they did
before.
There is an evil among some of the poor which will certainly prove their
ruin unless they overcome it. They have embraced the truth with their coarse,
rough, uncultivated habits, and it takes some time for them to see and realize
their coarseness, and that it is not in accordance with the character of Christ.
They look upon others who are more orderly and refined as being proud, and
you may hear them say: "The truth brings us all down upon a level." But it is
an entire mistake to think that the truth brings the receiver down. It brings
him up, refines his taste, sanctifies his judgment, and, if lived out, is
continually fitting him for the society of holy angels in the city of God. The
truth is designed to bring us all up upon a level.
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