Required reading
The Christian's daily walk, in holy security and peace by Henry Scudder (Available from Amazon or free here) - Read Chapter 10 (Directions for walking with God under afflictions).
My summary
Today Scudder's advice concerns afflictions.
Firstly Scudder briefly tells us some rules concerning lighter crosses:
(i) lay them not to heart;
(ii) let them cause you to pity and pray.
Secondly Scudder spends most of the chapter providing directions on how to bear all afflictions well. He advises:
(i) be not transported with passion and anger;
(ii) be not overwhelmed or sullen with grief;
(iii) bear them patiently;
(iv) bear them cheerfully and thankfully;
(v) bear them fruitfully.
What grabbed me
I regularly find Scudder's points not to be evenly weighted. For example, most of this chapter was on how to be patient in affliction.
Anyway, I did appreciate Scudder's reminder that God doesn't make us suffer more than we can take: 'God afflicts you in measure, Isaiah xxvii. 8 ; fitting your affliction for kind, time, and weight, according to the strength of grace which he has already given you, or which certainly he will bestow upon you. He does never lay more upon you, than what you shall be able to bear, 1 Cor. x. 13, and will always with the cross and temptation, make a way to escape. The husbandman will not always be ploughing, Isaiah xxiii. 24, 25, and harrowing of his ground, but only gives it so much as it hath need of, or as the nature or situation of the soil requires. So likewise he threshes his divers sorts of grain, with divers instruments, according as the grain can endure them : the fitches are not threshed with a threshing instrument, neither is the cart-wheel turned about upon the cummin: bread-corn is bruised, because he will not ever be threshing it, nor break it with the wheel of his cart, nor bruise it with his horsemen, Isaiah xxviii. 26 — 28. If the husbandman do all this by the discretion wherewith God has instructed him ; can you think that God, who is wonderful in counsel, and excellent in working, Isaiah xxviii. 29, will plough and harrow any of his ground, or thresh any of his corn, above that which is fit, and more than his ground and corn can bear? Should not his ground and corn therefore be patient at such tillage, and at such threshing ? '
God knows what he's doing - just trust him.
Next week's reading
Read Chapter 11 (Of uprightness).
Now it's your turn
Please post your own notes and thoughts in the comments section below.
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