Dear HLPC family,
I enjoy a good devotional book to read in addition to the Bible reading plan I follow. This year, I’m using the read the Bible in a year plan provided by Ligonier Ministries in Tabletalk magazine. The devotional book I’m using this year, that I’m enjoying immensely, is entitled Voices from the Past: A Year of Puritan Devotional Readings that is published by Banner of Truth.
Today’s reading was taken from Puritan Pastor Richard Sibbes. Here’s a brief quote:
Among the many faculties of the soul, much of our unnecessary trouble arises from the imagination. Its perception is a shallow understanding of good or bad taken from the senses. The delights of sense highly influence the imagination. Thus, if the very best things are accompanied by inconveniences, the imagination might misjudge them as bad. Likewise, if the very worst things bring respect and contentment in the world, they are imagined to be good. The imagination can see greater happiness in outward good things and a greater misery in outward difficulties than there really is. Many lives are almost nothing but imagination.
I believe what Sibbes is getting at is our natural tendency to look at God’s providential ordering of our lives through our own feeble sense and not through the lens of His Word and His character. This isn’t an easy task. Sibbes is drawing our attention to the Lord’s ability to use things for our good that don’t appear that way in the moment.
William Cowper, in his hymn “God Moves in a Mysterious Way” put it this way:
Judge not the Lord by feeble sense, but trust him for his grace;
behind a frowning providence, he hides a smiling face.
Only God, by His grace, can give us this kind of insight into hard times. May He keep us close to His heart through His Word and by His Spirit, granting us faith to believe that His love for us – proven in the life, death, burial, and resurrection of His Son, Jesus Christ, never quits even when circumstances make our imaginations run away from us.
Your Pastor,
Paul