Underpinning all really is the need to just trust Him.
He is trustworthy: God is unfaltering, unchanging--immutable--and He is good and infinitely wise.
He is sovereign, too, is the thing: His will is done in all the earth. Even so, as it yet be the case that He has seen fit to endure man's rebellion for a time. Some vessels fashioned for glory and others for wrath, as it were, that He would be glorified through the manifestation of His grace in Christ, toward the one, and of His righteous, loving wrath, unto the other.
There are sweet reprieves and blessings being granted, presently, in my own life. My heart is sore, even to own it openly. Yet, these things are so. And nonetheless are His to give or take as He wills.
So, holding loosely to the dear blessings, I am humbled to receive such mercies. Though fruition is yet to be full, already tasted in measure for such encouragements as are known.
None of receive what we ought, is all--we all ought to receive eternal punishment, at the very least. An immediate retribution for ever having erred against Him, moreover, is justly due.
Yet, He abstains. Longsuffering, till the full measure of Christ's reward is drawn.
It's for His glory that we are not consumed, to the praise of the glory of His grace.
Each to each, then, whatever comes or goes--we truly are unprofitable servants. And our right service is to offer ourselves wholly to Him, daily and in all. We are His, on the whole, regardless, so we give Him nothing but what is His by right desert.
So, to live by faith, then?
What is that, when all the world howls a cacophony of rage at His preeminence? Subtly, though, so that unless we hear the Shepherd's voice more deeply, still, we find ourselves easily falling into that step...
Does He not provide for His own, though? Does He not preserve us, even day by day? Some even as hand to mouth, and yet as by grace? He gives as He warrants, not as we demand.
Yet, we are commanded to heed Him--by our very design, dependent on Him for life and breath, and all our being.
So, who are we to question what He ordains? Except to submit, and to relent by praising Him all the while for His gracious goodness.
Whatever the depths of woe or tragedy, is all, His love does run deeper. And He meets us there, in Christ, to redeem our ashes. A savor of life unto life, then--a light in the darkness, wending its way gloriously through, elegant and brilliantly simple. He is. And all which is, is His.
Had we ought not, then, to trust Him to do as He has said?
