Part of why trials make Christ beautiful to our eyes is that trials break off all our worldly securities, and in the moment of suffering, we see that wealth and notoriety and possessions and lust and all the other allurements of the world are emptied of their appeal, and we are left, like the bankrupt prodigal, running home. “When great trials are in view,” Newton writes, we run simply and immediately to our all-sufficient Friend, feel our dependence, and cry in good earnest for help; but if the occasion seems small, we are too apt secretly to lean to our own wisdom and strength, as if in such
...more
