Wretched Man That I Am!
Who will deliver me from this body of death?

Feb

7

The Mystery of Providence-Chapter 2

Filed Under puritan reading challenge, reading

When I’m really rolling, I tend to forget these books were written 300+ years ago… until, that is, I read something like this:

Suppose your mothers had brought you forth in America, among the savage Indians, who herd together as brute beasts, are scorched with heat, and starved with cold, being naked, destitute and defenceless. p. 47

or this:

This is the case of millions, and millions of millions, for pagan idolaters, as that searching scholar, Brerewood, informs us, do not only fill the circumference of nine hundred miles in Europe, but almost one half of Africa, more than the half of Asia, and almost the whole of America. p. 48

It’s a harsh jolt back into reality to realize that all of these thoughts, so applicable to what is going inside and outside my home today, were put to paper so long ago. Of course, we are still a pagan country of brute beasts.

Alas! Were there a desire awakened in any of their hearts after a Gospel-discovery of salvation, which ordinarily is not nor can be rationally supposed, yet, poor creatures, they might travel from sea to sea to hear the Word, and not find it; whereas you can hardly miss the opportunities of hearing the Gospel. p. 51

Unfortunately there are just as many opportunities today to hear something that is so not the Gospel. From Osteen to Schuller. Dross everywhere.

Of course we have a member in our church who came to Christ watching Jimmy Swaggart years ago, so… yeah… Providence.

Another performance of Providence which must be carefully noticed and weighed is the designation of the stock and family out of which we should spring and rise. p. 53

…if they took any care to educate you religiously and train you up ‘in the nurture and admonition of the Lord,’ you are bound to reckon it among your chief mercies, that you sprang from the loins of such parents, for from this spring a double stream of mercy rises to you. p. 53

Here is where I pause. Um, I didn’t have that thing he’s talking about on page 53. I was brought up ‘religiously.’ My family was working hard (they still are working hard) to be very, very good people. Unfortunately, the ladder is propped up on the wrong building.

However, even as I type I know that it was not all bad. Being brought up as a Mormon honestly kept me out of trouble I would have found otherwise. My family is close and caring and loving. Even then, I knew the Bible better than many folks sitting in the pews today (granted, it was King James only, and if anything or anyone ever felt the need to contradict it… no worries, it simply wasn’t translated correctly).

So, ironically I was given many good tools that I simply was not able to put to use until I was 35 years old.
… brought up with some of the right tools… hmm… sort of like being raised by a psychopath only to learn much later in life how to use the claw end of the hammer appropriately.

Which brings me to where I’ll end this already too long post.

If any shall say this was not their case, they had little help heavenward from their parents, to such I reply as follows.
If you had little furtherance, yet own it as a special providence that you had no hindrance; or, if you had opposition, yet admire the grace of God in plucking you out by a wonderful distinguishing hand of mercy from among them and keeping alive the languishing sparks of grace amidst the floods of opposition. And learn from hence, if God give you a posterity of your own, to be so much the more strict and careful of family duties, by how much you have acutely felt the want of it in yourselves. p. 57

And finally regarding our responsibility to our children:

There is none in the world so likely as you to be instruments of their eternal good. You have peculiar advantages that no one else has; such as the interest you have in their affections; your opportunities to instil the knowledge of Christ into them, being daily with them
(Deut. 6.7); your knowledge of their character. If therefore you neglect, who shall help them?

For my family and my children, it all starts now… which me… and God… and his Providence, of course.

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