One point of focus

What comfort there is in these words. "The Christian knows no change with regard to God. He may be rich today and poor tomorrow; he may be sickly today and well tomorrow; he may be in happiness today, tomorrow he may be distressed - but there is no change with regard to his relationship to God. If he loved me yesterday, he loves me today. My unmoving mansion of rest is my blessed Lord." -Charles Spurgeon "The ultimate ground of our rejoicing can never be our circumstances, even though we as Christians recognize that our circumstances are providentially arranged. If our joy derives primarily from our circumstances, then when our circumstances change, we will be miserable. Our delight must be in the Lord himself. That is what enables us to live with joy above our circumstances. As Nehemiah puts it, “The joy of the Lord is your strength” (Neh. 8:10). Perhaps that is one of the reasons why the Lord sometimes allows miserable circumstances to lash us—that we may learn this lesson.…Whatever the mysteries of evil and sorrow, they do have the salutary effect of helping believers to shift the ground of their joy from created things to the Creator, from the temporary to the eternal, from jingoism to Jesus, from consumption to God." -D.A. Carson Yesterday I was reading through one of my favorite books, Disciplines of a Godly Woman by Barbara Hughes, and one of the appendices says this. Or at least these were the bits I wrote down. I am not the point. He is. It is not about me getting out of suffocating pain. It is about His Son being revealed in me, about God's image being released in me. I need to yield to the instrument of refinement He has chosen in my life, and confess that I don't know how to yield, that I am helpless and angry. But I am willing to be taught. May He teach me through the word to trust Him and understand who He is in His love and mercy. The secret is Christ in me, not me in a different circumstance. The beloved of the Lord dwells in safety. The High God surrounds him all day long, and he dwells between His shoulders. (Deut. 33:12) Oh what a joyful and comforting thing, to know that I am right there, in God's arms, resting on his chest, between His shoulders.