For us however, there is a time coming when our spiritual warfare will be finished, our perspective enlarged, and our understanding increased. Then we will look back upon the experiences through which the Lord led us and be overwhelmed by adoration and love for Him! We will then see and acknowledge that mercy and goodness directed every step. We shall see that what we once mistakenly called afflictions and misfortune were in reality blessings without which we would not have grown in faith. Nothing happened to us without a reason. No problem came upon us sooner, pressed on us more heavily, or continued longer than our situation required. God, in divine grace and wisdom, used our many afflictions, each as needed, that we might ultimately possess an exceeding and eternal weight of glory, prepared by the Lord for His people.
We very often fail to see our present circumstances in right perspective. Look back over the past, however and compare what you have been brought through with your frame of mind during each successive period. Consider how wonderfully one thing has been connected with another so that what we now count as our greatest benefits are rooted in incidents that at the time seemed insignificant. We have sometimes escaped from the grave dangers not by any wisdom or foresight of our own, but by the intervention of unforeseen circumstances. So both the revelation of Scripture and our own individual experiences confirm the wisdom and good providence of God. He watches over His people from the earliest moment of their lives. He overrules and guards them through all their blind wanderings and leads them in a way that they know not.
--John Newton
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