understanding
Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding… -Proverbs 3:5
For the truth is that God in his wisdom, to make and keep us humble and to teach us to walk by faith, has hidden from us almost everything that we should like to know about the providential purposes which he is working out in the churches and in our own lives. -JI Packer, Knowing God
To think that not only might the story of some heroic person be epical but also that of any man, and that the way to Heaven is not outside the world, but through it. -Matthew Pearl, The Dante Club
Who can straighten what he has made crooked? When times are good, be happy, but when times are bad, consider: God has made the one as well as the other. Therefore, a man cannot discover anything about his future. -Ecclesiastes 7:13-14
Come, O Lord! -1 Cor 16:22
Christ tells his disciples that “this sickness will not end in death” in reference to Lazarus. Though he was awakened from death, Christ said this before Lazarus died. This leads me to believe that he was not talking about death on earth that could be avoided, as it obviously cannot. He was speaking of death eternal, the death he’s saved us from. I sometimes think this sickness he means is our life here, which oftentimes makes no sense. We are crewman of a large ship, and our ears only sometimes catch the still small voice of the ship’s captain. We are, in our sinful nature, not to know anything beyond what he allows us to as we make an effort, depending completely on God, to discern what that voice is crying out to us through the torrents of wind and rain: repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near! “But God, what of this or that?!” “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near! Trust me, stay the course, throw off what hinders and look ahead!” And those whose hearts are made for it hope that the kingdom is nearer everyday as things fall apart and the little that remains intact begins to show itself for what it is: a lie. All we knew was not as it seemed and we distrust ourselves less and less as the storm barges on. And as we distrust ourselves, our minds are renewed with the things he tells us and as we trust more and more in these things, the light begins to dawn. Though there is rain, we endure. Though there is wind, we stand unshaken, rooted in the truth that even if we are thrown off of the ship, broken, the only thing lying at the bottom of the sea will be the part of us that couldn’t hear the ship’s captain in the first place. We will be with the Lord forever. We will one day hear his voice and see the map that only the captain saw. We will praise him, even for that. We will understand that to the extent that we didn’t understand tragedy was the extent we didn’t understand how great His love for us truly was, for we see but a reflection as in a mirror.
Now my heart is troubled, and what shall I say? ’Father, save me from this hour’? No, it is for this very reason that I came to this hour. Father, glorify your name! -John 12
Indeed, in our hearts we felt the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead. -2 Cor 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byAGDVu4sC4
