Last week the children and I worked to stack all this scrap wood that the two Samuel's had brought home from an old deck they'd torn down.
With all of us helping, it only took a few hours to get the wood cut, stacked, and the mess raked up.
I knew this kind of work isn't very fun, so I hid some gold chocolate coins out there underneath various pieces of wood for the children to find as they helped load the wheelbarrow.
I read today that Charles Spurgeon said, “They who dive
in the sea of affliction bring up rare pearls.”
John Piper, in today's devotional of Solid Joys wrote,"Learning obedience does not
mean switching from disobedience to obedience. It means growing deeper
and deeper with God in the experience of obedience. It means
experiencing depths of yieldedness to God that would not have been
otherwise attained. This is what came through suffering. No pain, no
gain.
Samuel Rutherford said that when
he was cast into the cellars of affliction, he remembered that the great
King always kept his wine there."
Remembering that God has a purpose for the afflictions, sufferings, chastenings or testings that we go through gives us hope.
And hope gives us strength.
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