My Dad

He loves to read. Here is something he read recently that he e-mailed me. I thought it would be good to add to the blog...

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I found the following in a book by a Puritan, John Flavel, which has been a great help to me. The book is entitled, Keeping the Heart This is a nice passage from it...

"...it may stay your heart if you consider that in these troubles God is about that work over which, if you saw the design of it, your soul would rejoice. We poor creatures are bemisted with much ignorance, and are not able to discern how particular providences work towards God's end. Therefore, like Israel in the wilderness, we are often murmuring because providence leads us about in a howling desert, where we are exposed to straits; though He led them then, and is leading us now, by the right way to a city of habitations. If you could but see how God, in His secret counsel, has exactly laid the whole plot and design of your salvation, even to the smallest means and circumstances: "By this way and by these means such a one shall be saved, and by no other. Such a number of afflictions I appoint for this man, at this time, and in this order; they shall befall him thus and thus they shall work for him" - could you, I say, but discern the admirable harmony of divine dispensations, their mutual relations to each other, together with the general respect and influence they all have unto the last end, then of all the conditions in the world you would choose that which you are now in, had you liberty to make your own choice. Providence is like a curious piece of tapestry made up of a thousand shreds which, singly, we know not what to make of, but put together and stitched up in orderly fashion they represent a beautiful history to the eye. As God works all things according to the cousel of His own will, so the counsel of God has ordained this as the best way to bring about your salvation...Did you but see this, I need say no more to support the most dejected heart."