Southern Presbyterian
Puritan Board Doctor
PERSECUTION: ‘THE LORD IS A WONDERFUL WORKMAN’
We too often imagine that eminent leaders of the church lived in bright days so unlike our own. The truth is different. The life of Robert Bruce is a reminder that difficulties, affliction and adversity are commonly the characteristic of such men. Suffering marked almost the whole period through which he lived and, as John Laidlaw has written, ‘It is partly the gloom and disappointment of the times and his conduct under these which have helped to shed lustre on his name.’ The same was true of the small band of faithful men who were his friends; all of them knew banishment, imprisonment and confinement of various kinds. What is striking is the way in which they saw their afflictions, not as a cause for dismay and discouragement, but as a confirmation that they were in the way of Christ, and that the worst the world could do would not prevent his blessing. In the words of Bruce: ‘That same fury and rage whereby they think to dishonour God and overwhelm his Kirk, he turneth that same rage to the contrary, and he maketh out of that same fury his own glory and the deliverance of his Kirk to shine. The Lord is a wonderful workman; he bringeth about his purpose in such sort that he can draw out light out of darkness.’
-From A SCOTTISH CHRISTIAN HERITAGE; Iain H. MURRAY
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We too often imagine that eminent leaders of the church lived in bright days so unlike our own. The truth is different. The life of Robert Bruce is a reminder that difficulties, affliction and adversity are commonly the characteristic of such men. Suffering marked almost the whole period through which he lived and, as John Laidlaw has written, ‘It is partly the gloom and disappointment of the times and his conduct under these which have helped to shed lustre on his name.’ The same was true of the small band of faithful men who were his friends; all of them knew banishment, imprisonment and confinement of various kinds. What is striking is the way in which they saw their afflictions, not as a cause for dismay and discouragement, but as a confirmation that they were in the way of Christ, and that the worst the world could do would not prevent his blessing. In the words of Bruce: ‘That same fury and rage whereby they think to dishonour God and overwhelm his Kirk, he turneth that same rage to the contrary, and he maketh out of that same fury his own glory and the deliverance of his Kirk to shine. The Lord is a wonderful workman; he bringeth about his purpose in such sort that he can draw out light out of darkness.’
-From A SCOTTISH CHRISTIAN HERITAGE; Iain H. MURRAY
Sent from my SM-G920V using Tapatalk
