If you check out my favorite books list on my blog profile, you’ll see that I read Spurgeon’s “Morning and Evening” every day. In light of the physical issues I mentioned in yesterday’s blog, today’s Evening reading of Spurgeon is exactly what I need.

Writing of the limits God puts on illness, Mr. Spurgeon says that “The God of providence has limited the time, manner, intensity, repetition, and effects of all our sickness; each throb is decreed….Affliction is not haphazard….He who made no mistakes in balancing the clouds and stretching out the heavens commits no errors in measuring out the ingredients that compose the medicine of souls. We cannot suffer too much nor be relieved too late. (Italics mine.)

This encourages me, not only for my present circumstance but for every time I suffer in any way. Every one of us suffers in various ways and various degrees. We’re eager–no, we’re frantic–to get it over with. “Oh Lord, how long?” has been the cry of my heart many times, wanting him to relieve my pain. Too frequently I have been prone to thinking I have suffered too much and have been relieved too late. Or even years later, not yet.

Spurgeon closes with this pithy word: “When we consider how hardmouthed we are, it is a wonder that we are not driven with a sharper bit. The thought is full of comfort that He who has established the boundary lines of our lives has also determined the boundaries of our tribulation.”

Knowing how hardmouthed I am in the sight of God is necessary before I can understand and receive the grace he extends to me even in every moment of suffering. Only then can I be full of comfort with the thought that God has determined the boundaries of my suffering. I am in a place of complete safety, regardless of where circumstances may lead! Quietness and rest!

All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.