The following is from Sinclair Ferguson (whose Scottish accent is at least as cool as Alistair Begg’s if not more so, IMHO):
[W]here we cannot understand we can still trust.
This requires a deliberate commitment of the mind. That hurts when our natural instinct is to let our minds and emotions dwell on our pain, loss, and disappointment. But it is a hurt that heals.
Scripture gives us a poignant example of this in the life of Jacob. He experienced a great change when he met with God at Peniel. But some time afterward, Jacob’s wife Rachel went into labor as they traveled from Bethel to Bethlehem. She died shortly after childbirth.
Imagine the scene. Jacob, who had wrestled with God and held his ground, watched helplessly as his wife lay dying. Just before she died she turned from gazing at her baby boy to look at her husband: ‘Jacob,’ she said, ‘Call him Ben-oni.’
That was Rachel’s dying wish. ‘Call him Son-of-my-sorrow.’ ‘But,’ we are told, ‘his father named him Ben-jamin’ (Gen. 35:18). Ben-jamin means Son-of-my-right-hand. Jacob would not think of his newborn son as the cause of his grief, but as the recipient of his highest blessing, the blessing of his right hand. He would not allow himself to become preoccupied with a question he could never answer — Why did God let her die when we needed her most? By God’s grace, even in the midst of tragedy, there would be blessing.
It is impossible to imagine what effort of mind and will it took for Jacob lovingly to decline his wife’s dying wish. But he knew he needed to commit himself to the principle that the Lord takes from us one blessing only to prepare us for another.
Excerpted from Deserted by God? by Sinclair Ferguson.
