A time of humbling

Jonathan Edwards, a famous Puritan preacher, shared the following in describing how God often deals with His people:

"It is God’s usual method before remarkable discoveries of his mercy and love to them, especially by spiritual mercies, in a special manner to humble them, and make them sensible of their misery and helplessness in themselves, and of their vileness and unworthiness, either by some remarkably humbling dispensation of his providence or influence of his Spirit."

I found this very fitting as I read it this morning.  In our current “dispensation of God’s providence,” aka our crazy, dramatic life, we are grieving the loss of our incredible foster daughter, preparing to meet, adopt and travel the globe with Emma, preparing to leave our home and this country for longer than we’ve ever left, and packing up our entire house… all in one week.  That’s a lot to try and swallow.  Any one of those things is a lot to handle, let alone all of them at one time.  It's overwhelming to say the least.  Making me sensible of my misery?  Yes.  This world is not my home, and there’s so much about life here I’m really displeased about, especially our landlord.  But not only miserable about my situation, I’m also miserable about my reaction to it and my attitude through it.  Joyful?  No.  Patient?  No.  Gentle?  No.  Instead I’m angry, stressed, frustrated, demanding, anxious.  I’m miserable about the sin that is coming out of my heart and how it’s affecting me and my poor husband.  And the thing is love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness those are the fruit of the Spirit in me, not the fruit of my circumstances.  So this means that even in the horrible, terrible, no good, very bad days that we’ve had recently, I CAN exhibit the fruit of the Spirit instead of the fruit of the flesh.  This is where I become sensible of the helplessness in myself that Edwards speaks of above.  I, in my flesh, cannot produce the fruit of the Spirit.  I must depend on God to produce this fruit in me.  So, if I allow myself to be humbled and dependent, I will experience God’s remarkable mercy and love.  This is not to say that His mercy and love will come in the form of changing my circumstances and making everything sunshine, glitter and rainbows.  It still may be incredibly difficult and hard and humbling.  Yet through the clouds, His mercy will rain and His love will shine and I will be joyful and at peace in Him.