Thought for the Lord's Day - #52

Every grace that brings a Christian to heaven must be a tried grace. He must try his patience, his contentment, his humility. How shall all these graces be tried but in a variety of estates and conditions?

And secondly, How should we have experience of the goodness of God but in variety of estates? When we find the stable, certain, constant love of God in variety of conditions, that howsoever our conditions ebb and flow, be up and down, like the spring weather, sometimes fair and sometimes foul, yet not withstanding the love of God is constant always, and we have never so sure experience of it as in the variety of conditions that befall us; then we know that in God there is 'no shadow of changing,' howsoever the changes of our life be. Is it not a point worth our learning, to know the truth of our grace, and to know the constancy of God's love, with whom we are in a gracious covenant?

And then again, we learn much wisdom how to manage our life hereby, even in the intercourse of our changes, to be now rich, now poor, now high, now low in estates. He that is carried on in one condition, he hath no wisdom to judge another's estate, or to carry himself to a Christian in another condition, because he was never abased himself. He look very big at him. He knows not how to tender another, that hath not been in another's condition. And therefore to furnish us, that we may carry ourselves as Christians, meekly lovingly, and tenderly to others, God will have us go to heaven in variety, not in one uniform condition in regard of outward things.

- Richard Sibbes