When the world smiles upon us, and we have got a warm nest, how do we prophesy of rest and peace in those acquisitions, thinking with good Baruch, great things for ourselves, but Providence by a particular or general calamity overturns our plans (Jer. 45:4,5), and all this to turn our hearts from the creature to God.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that despite our plans and comforts, external events can disrupt our lives, prompting us to seek deeper significance in our reliance on God.
In this quote, John Flavel emphasizes the unpredictability of life and the importance of redirecting our focus from material possessions and personal ambitions to a greater understanding of divine purpose. He reflects on the human tendency to find security in worldly acquisitions, yet warns that calamities can disrupt this sense of security, reminding us to refocus our hearts towards God rather than clinging to transient comforts.
In practice
This quote can be shared in a sermon to illustrate the importance of faith amid life's challenges.
All the tears of a penitent sinner, should he shed as many as there have fallen drops of rain, since the creation, to this day, cannot wash away one sin. The everLasting burnings in hell, cannot purify the flaming conscience, from the least sin.
All the dark, intricate, puzzling providences at which we were sometimes so offended...we shall [one day] see to be to us, as the difficult passage through the wilderness was to Israel, "the right way to the city of habitation".
Providence is like a curious piece of tapestry made of a thousand shreds, which, single, appear useless, but put together, they represent a beautiful history to the eye.
The carnal person fears man, not God. The strong Christian fears God, not man. The weak Christian fears man too much, and God too little.
Whatsoever we have over-loved, idolized, and leaned upon, God has from time to time broken it, and made us to see the vanity of it; so that we find the readiest course to be rid of our comforts is to set our hearts inordinately upon them.
It is the duty of the saints, especially in times of straights, to reflect upon the performances of Providence for them in all the states and through all the stages of their lives.
There's that popular misconception of man as something between a brute and an angel. Actually man is in transit between brute and God.
The unformed is not worse than the over-formed. The former is nothing; the latter is mere appearance. Real form presupposes real life.
Society cares about the individual only in so far as he is profitable. The young know this. Their anxiety as they enter in upon social life matches the anguish of the old as they are excluded from it.
It is a poor reverie which invites a nap. One must even wonder whether, in this "failing asleep", the subconscious itself does not undergo a decline in being.
Man is not interesting without some imperfection
I have now come to a stage of realization in which I see that God is walking in every human form and manifesting Himself alike through the sage and the sinner, the virtuous and the vicious. Therefore when I meet different people I say to myself, “God in the form of the saint, God in the form of the sinner, God in the form of the righteous, God in the form of the unrighteous.
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