This morning I am at McDonalds (one of the few public places I have found in Japan with internet access!) working on a course I will be teaching this winter on Evangelism.  I came across a random quote that I have never heard from the eighteenth-century theologian Jonathan Edwards.  We often associate his name with “Sinners in the hand of an Angry God.”  But this one brings immediate truth to any pain we may be harboring by decisions or hurts inflicted by different people who have intentionally or unintentionally injured us.  It reminds us of the practical truths that are foundational to our belief in God’s Sovereignty.

“Love to God disposes men to see his hand in everything;  to own him as the governor of the world, and the director of providence;  and to acknowledge his disposal in everything that takes place.  And the fact that the hand of God is a great deal more concerned in all that happens to us than the treatment of men is, should lead us, in a great measure, not to think of things as from men, but to have respect to them chiefly as from God — as ordered by his love and wisdom, even when their immediate source may be the malice or heedlessness of a fellow-man.  And if we indeed consider and feel that they are from the hand of God, then we shall be disposed meekly to receive and quietly to submit to them, and to own that the greatest injuries received from men are justly and even kindly ordered of God, and so be far from any ruffle or tumult of mind on account of them.” (Jonathan Edwards;  Charity and its Fruits)