The 17th-century French intellectual Blaise Pascal powerfully describes...
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The 17th-century French intellectual Blaise Pascal powerfully describes our miserable condition on this side of the fall into sin: "Since nature makes us unhappy whatever our state, our desire[s] depict for us a happy state, because they link the state in which we are with the pleasures of that in which we are not. Even if we did attain these pleasures that would not make us happy, because we should have new desires appropriate to this new state" (Pensees, p. 238). We are never satisfied with life.
Jeremiah provides an antidote, in claiming that our whole lives are in God's hands and so discontent has no place. Nothing can happen to us that is not ultimately going to serve God's aims for our lives. John Calvin powerfully summarizes the comfort this word brings: "We hence see that due honor is then conceded to God, when being content with His defense we disregard the fury of man [or our yearnings] and haste not to contend with all the ungodly, yea, though they [and our blind yearnings for pleasure] may rise up in mass against us" (Calvin's Commentaries, Vol. IX/1, p. 42).
Jeremiah provides an antidote, in claiming that our whole lives are in God's hands and so discontent has no place. Nothing can happen to us that is not ultimately going to serve God's aims for our lives. John Calvin powerfully summarizes the comfort this word brings: "We hence see that due honor is then conceded to God, when being content with His defense we disregard the fury of man [or our yearnings] and haste not to contend with all the ungodly, yea, though they [and our blind yearnings for pleasure] may rise up in mass against us" (Calvin's Commentaries, Vol. IX/1, p. 42).
