This totally encouraged me today! Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving.

A beautiful face--under a black mask! (William Secker, "The Consistent Christian" 1660)

"What! Shall we receive good at the hand of God--and shall we not receive evil?"
Job 2:10
The consistent Christian speak well of God--whatever evil he receives from God. To bless God for mercies--is the way to increase them; to bless God for miseries--is the way to remove them. Did not the possession of riches sometimes draw away our hearts--then the loss of them would not break our hearts!
"The Lord gives--and the Lord takes away; blessed be the Name of the Lord." Job 1:21.
God gives before He takes--and He takes only what He gives! The hour-glass of outward happiness soon runs out! Today Job is the richest man in all the east; tomorrow Job is the poorest man in all the world. Yet his heart was like a fruitful paradise--when his estate was like a barren wilderness! Though God burnt up his houses--yet his palace (his heart) was left standing. Outward mercies are like the tide--which ebbs as well as flows. They are like the sky--which sometimes is clear, and at another time clouded. They are like a budding flower--which opens on a warm day, and shuts on a cold day. If God bless us in taking--as well as in giving; let us bless Him for taking--as well as for giving. That is a choice artist--who can play well upon a broken instrument. To be impatient with our affliction--and patient with our corruption; is to be angry with the medicine which heals us--and in love with the poison which kills us! Beloved, it is sometimes a mercy to us--that God removes outward mercies from us! He never wounds a saint to kill him--but to heal him! God does but take that out of your hands--which would thrust Him out of your heart! Too many think that God is cutting down the whole tree--when He is but lopping off its wasteful branches. They imagine that He is demolishing the superstructure, when He is only laying a right foundation. Poor souls, He is not nipping the flowers--but plucking up the weeds! He is not laying your land fallow--but ploughing the field! God's Providence has a beautiful face--under a black mask! God has the fairest ends--in the foulest ways! The sheep may be dipped in water to wash it--when there is no design in the Good Shepherd to drown it!Christian reader, you may read the marks of a kind Father--in the severe stripes of His children. Every twig of His black rod of affliction--is but to draw His lovely image upon you!