The circumstances of our lives are a most valuable sphere of education. They represent the Lord’s hand directly. In our circumstances He can restrain, subdue or limit us. He can make them irksome to teach us patience, or severe to teach us endurance, or meager to teach us confidence. He can break self-will in us and He can weaken the power of nature.
What a valuable thing is poverty. The enemy may make the saints poor, but that very thing results in their enrichment. The Lord was poor in the world when He might have claimed everything. In grace He was made like unto His brethren. Indeed He went lower than any, laid in a manger, crucified on a cross, buried in the grave of another, and between those points having not where to lay His head. But from the lowest He has ascended to the highest.
All power is in His hands. He could make every one of His people rich. He could change our circumstances completely, for He it is who controls them. But they serve in His hands as formation, and if we accept them that way we shall profit. The Lord may have to bring in a calamity something that will cast us absolutely on God. He can bring in circumstances for which there seems no explanation whatever, but He does so that we may learn to trust Him.
He desires that we trust Him implicitly when everything seems to be a denial of His love. Where else and how else could we learn all this, except in the circumstances of human life?
Soon the painful times of learning will be over, and we shall enter into the joy. We shall thank Him then for every bit of education which leads us in the appreciation of His ways as learned here on earth.
May the Lord grant us to see that growth is connected with earth and enjoyment with heaven. We then shall not be overwhelmed with doubt when the way is hard, but as submitting to the will of God we shall gather an appreciation of His ways and of the blessedness of the divine end in view.
From a letter