Scripture: Psalm 121
“Of the evils that infect God’s world (moral and spiritual perversity, waste of good, and the physical disorders and disruptions of a spoiled cosmos), it can summarily be said: God permits evil; he punishes evil with evil; he brings good out of evil; he uses evil to test and discipline those he loves; and one day he will redeem his people from the power and presence of evil altogether. . . The doctrine of providence teaches Christians that they are never in the grip of blind forces (fortune, change, luck, fate); all that happens to them is divinely planned, and each event comes as a new summons to trust, obey and rejoice, knowing that all is for one’s spiritual and eternal good.”
JI Packer
“The vulnerability that leads to flourishing requires risk, which is the possibility of loss – the chance that when we act, we will lose something we value. Risk, like life, is always about probabilities, never about certainties. To risk is to open ourselves up to the chance that something will go wrong, that something will be taken from us – without knowing for sure whether that loss will come to pass or not. To be vulnerable is to be exposed to the possibility of loss – and not just loss of things or possessions, but loss of our own self. Vulnerable at root means woundable – and any wound deeper than the most superficial scratch injures and limits not just our bodies but our very sense of self. Wounded, we are forced to become careful, tender, tentative in the way we move in the world.”
Andy Crouch
“I sing because I’m happy, I sing because I’m free,
For His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me.”
Civilla Martin
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