Sharing a portion today from my quiet time reading with J.I. Packer on Knowing God Through the Year.
God’s almighty wisdom is always active and never fails. All his words of creation and providence and grace display it, and until we can see it in them, we just are not seeing them straight. But we cannot recognize God’s wisdom unless we know the end for which he is working.
Here many go wrong. Misunderstanding what the Bible means when it says that God is love (see I John 4:8-10), they think that God intends a trouble-free life for all. Hence they conclude that anything painful and upsetting (illness, accident, injury, job loss, the suffering of a loved one) indicates either that God’s wisdom or his power, or both, have broken down. Or they conclude that God, after all, does not exist.
But this idea of God’s intention is a complete mistake. God’s wisdom is not pledged to keep a fallen world happy. Not even to Christians has he promised a trouble-free life; rather the reverse. He has other ends in view for life in this world than simply to make it easy for everyone.
