As promised, we are once again at the beach with our good friend, Thomas Watson, and his book, All Things For Good.

As mentioned, that first part of the book, All Things, talks about the good things and the bad things that God uses for our good.

Of course, the bad things we don't always like, and Watson walks through those. One of those bad things is affliction, and as he deals with affliction,

he wants us to take, as he says, heart-quieting comfort, and how God brings these things into our life for his purposes.

He has some vivid ways of describing how affliction works in our lives.

At one point, he says, God's rod is a pencil to draw Christ's image more lively upon us.

At another place, he says, afflictions are the medicine, which God uses to carry off our spiritual diseases.

They cure the timpani of pride, the fever of lust, the dropsy of covetousness.

Of course, we don't always like affliction. We can't always see God's purposes in it, and Watson reminds us that God's ways are above our ways.

Nevertheless, he calls us to trust in God. To remember that nothing that happens to us is random. Nothing is a mistake.

Everything happens for a reason. For God's reason, and so we need to learn to trust in God.

Not be discontent or malcontent, but truly content in what God is doing in our lives.

Well, that's the first part. The second part deals with that clause of loving God.

And he offers a beautiful and practical paragraph. So as you sit there and watch the waves, I'm going to read this to you.

Watson says, love is a humble grace. It does not walk abroad in state. It will creep upon its hands.

It will stoop and submit to anything whereby it may be serviceable to Christ.

As we see in Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, both of them honorable persons, yet one takes down Christ's body with his own hands, and the other embalms it with sweet odors.

It might seem much for persons of their rank to be employed in that service, but love made them do it.

If we love God, we shall not sink any work to mean for us, or to simple for us, by which we may be helpful to Christ's members.

Love is not squeamish. It will visit the sick, relieve the poor, wash the saints' wounds.

The mother that loves her child is not coy and nice. She will do these things for her child, which others would scorn to do.

He who loves God will humble himself to the meanest office of love to Christ and his members.

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