God Will Take Care Of You

J. C. Penney was building a successful career when he was hit hard by the 1929 Great Depression. He became overwhelmed with anxiety and insomnia. Then followed shingles, hospitalization, tranquilizers and drugs, but his condition worsened. He later said, “I was broken nervously and physically, filled with despair, unable to see even a ray of hope. I had nothing to live for. I felt I hadn’t a friend left in the world, that even my family turned against me.”

Then one morning the words, “Be not dismayed whate’er betide, God will take care of you,” floated from the hospital chapel. Penney made his way to the chapel where he listened to the service. Later he wrote, “Suddenly, something happened. I can’t explain it. I can only call it a miracle. I felt as if I had been instantly lifted out of the darkness of a dungeon into warm brilliant sunlight.”

On that day he really understood just how much the Lord Jesus cared for him, and he was never again overcome with worry. He said that those chapel moments were “the most dramatic and glorious twenty minutes of my life.”

And most of us know the rest of the story.