“All the afflictions that attend the people of God turn out to their profit and advantage. They are God’s furnace to cleanse and preserve his people. Saints thrive most internally when they are most afflicted. Afflictions lift up the soul to a fuller enjoyment of God… they keep the heart humble and tender… The more saints are beaten with the hammer of affliction, the more they trumpet God’s praises.”
– Thomas Brooks, Works of Thomas Brooks (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 2001), Volume 1: 47-54; as quoted by David P. Herding in Counseling the Depressed Person: The Puritan Alternative to Secular Psychology, 64-65.
photo: Lunchbox Photography