Do you rashly infer that the Lord has no love to you, because he has withdrawn the light of his countenance? Do you imagine your state to be hopeless, because it is dark and uncomfortable? Be not hasty in forming this conclusion. If any of the dispensations of God to his people will bear a favourable as well as a harsh construction, why should they not be construed in the best sense? And may not God have a design of love rather than of hatred in the dispensation under which you mourn? May he not depart for a season, without departing for ever? You are not the first that have mistaken the design of God in withdrawing himself. “Zion saith, the Lord hath forsaken me, my Lord hath forgotten me.” But was it so? What saith the answer of God? “Can a woman forget her sucking child?” etc.
Do you not know the sun still keeps on his course in the heavens even in dull and foggy weather when you cannot see it? And may it not be so with the love of God? Read Isaiah 50:10. May not I as well conclude in winter, when the flowers have hidden their beautiful heads underground, that they are quite dead and gone because I cannot find them in December where I saw them in May?
Do you sink down under the apprehension that the evidences of a total and final desertion are discoverable in your experience? Have you then lost your conscientious tenderness with regard to sin? And are you inclined to forsake God? If so, you have reason indeed to be alarmed. But if your conscience is tenderly alive; if you are resolved to cleave to the Lord; if the language of your heart is, I cannot forsake God, I cannot live without his presence; though he slay me, yet will I trust in him: then you have reason to hope that he will visit you again.
John Flavel. Keeping the Heart.
