Embracing Divine Providence

My dear brother, let God make of you what He will, He will end all with consolation, and shall make glory out of your sufferings; and would ye wish better work? This water was in your way to heaven, and written in your Lord’s book; ye behoved to cross it: and therefore kiss His wise and unerring providence.

Let not the censures of men, who see but the outside of things (and scarce well that), abate your courage and rejoicing in the Lord; howbeit, your faith seeth but the black side of providence, yet it hath a better side, and God shall let you see it. Learn to believe Christ better than His strokes; Himself and His promises better than His glooms. For we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, ergo, shipwreck, losses, disappointments, ill tongues, loss of friends, houses or country, are God’s workmen, set on work, to work out good to you, out of everything that befalleth you. Let not the Lord’s dealings seem harsh, rough or unfatherly, because it is unpleasant.

When the Lord’s blessed will bloweth cross your desires, it is best in humility to strike sail to Him and to be willing to be laid any way our Lord pleaseth: it is a point of denial of yourself, to be as if ye had not a will but had made a free disposition of it to God, and had sold it over to Him; and to make use of His will for your own is both true holiness, and your ease and peace.

Ye know not what the Lord is working out of this, but ye shall know it hereafter.

~ Samuel Rutherford