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Finding Peace in the Storm
reality that He loves us so profoundly that He is even
willing to allow extremely difficult things to assail us
for the purpose of our freedom, our healing, and our
salvation.
Modern parenting often takes the exact opposite
approach, as if making life easy for children is a good
thing. In fact, most drug-rehab facilities are filled with
children of wealthy parents who sought to protect those
children from the very adversity they needed to shape
their souls and their character. Those children are now
imprisoned by weak minds, hearts, and wills that cannot
think and act in ways that allow for freedom. When
we protect our children from consequences, we protect
them from learning, growing, and becoming men and
women of strength and integrity.
In contrast, our heavenly Father loves us in a way
that would never allow Him to protect us from that
which we need for our salvation. Understanding this
about His character, we can rest assured that all we
encounter is necessary for the fulfillment of all the
good that our hearts desire.
Indeed, what can be more satisfactory to a person
than to experience the fulfillment of all his desires? This
is the happy lot of the man who wills only what God
wills, because everything that happens, save sin, happens
through the will of God. There is a story to this effect in
the Lives of the Fathers about a farmer whose crops were
more plentiful than those of his neighbors. On being
asked how this happened with such unvarying regularity,
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