This is from the Christmas Newsletter 2010. A letter from a friend.
| One day recently, I met a cousin in the car park outside the local store, and he asked how I was doing. With typical aussie bravado, "Ï'm good, apart from my mother is in hospital and it looks like she will have a leg cut off, if she makes it at all, my mother in-law is in hospital with a stroke, both my house and the mother in law's houses have roofs smashed up in the big storm and will have to be replaced, I have 3 cars which should be written off by the same storm, and business is so busy I keep making mistakes because I am so tired" I wasn't miserable, if anything a little flippant. But my cousin said, "It seems God has some things to do with you, he wouldn't do it if you couldn't handle it" I went home realizing I was sounding and probably feeling a good deal more downcast than I wanted to admit and my cousin saw that. The next day I read this letter. It was a great encouragement to me, and I hope it is to you also. Regards Jim Finger. My friend writes, You say you are more disposed to cry misery than hallelujah. Why not both together? When the treble is praise and heart humiliation for the bass, the melody is pleasant and the harmony good. However, if not both together, we must have them alternately: not all singing, not all sighing, but an interchange and balance that we may be neither lifted too high, which would be the case if we were too comfortable, nor cast down too low, if we were sorrowful for too long a time. But though we change, the Saviour changes not. All our concerns are in his hands, and therefore are safe. His path is in the deep water, this thoughts and methods of conduct are high above the earth, and he often takes a course for accomplishing his purposes directly contrary to what our narrow views would prescribe. He wounds in order to heal, kills that he may make alive, casts down when he designs to raise up, brings death upon our feelings, wishes, and prospects when he is about to give us the desires of our hearts. These things he does to prove us; but He himself knows and has determined beforehand what he will do. The proof, indeed, usually turns out to our shame. Impatience and unbelief show their head and prompt us to suppose this and the other thing, yes and to perhaps feel all things are against us, and to question whether he be with us, and for us, --or not. But it issues likewise in the praise of His goodness, when we find that behind all our complaints and suspicions, He is still working wonderfully in us, causing light to shine out of the darkness, and doing us good in defiance of ourselves. John Newton, November 6, 1777, |
John Newton was a prominent slave trader, who later became a minister in the church. He was prominent then in the anti slave trade movement in England which resulted in the banning of the slave trade. He was also prominent in Australia's early history, as was Wilberforce. see The Fountain of Public Prosperity Piggin and Lidner 2020.
This letter was written in a book called "Cardiphonia" letters to the heart. John Newton replied to every letter he received as a minister in the Church, and some of the responses are recorded in this little book I have obtained. I would love to read the inwards letters, but alas they were not kept. Jim Finger.