In a recent sermon, the Pastor McShaffrey recommended the old puritan practice of “occasional meditation” (i.e., observing an earthly matter and using it to lift your mind to more heavenly thoughts).
This week’s flooding has prompted many to keep a constant eye on the cresting dams in LaValle and Hillsboro. Here is a quote from Jonathan Edwards which might make such observation a little more sobering:
The wrath of God is like great waters that are dammed for the present; they increase more and more, and rise higher and higher, till an outlet is given; and the longer the stream is stopped, the more rapid and mighty is its course, when once it is let loose.
It is true, that judgment against your evil works has not been executed hitherto; the floods of God’s vengeance have been withheld; but your guilt in the mean time is constantly increasing, and you are every day treasuring up more wrath; the waters are constantly rising, and waxing more and more mighty; and there is nothing but the mere pleasure of God, that holds the waters back, that are unwilling to be stopped, and press hard to go forward.
If God should only withdraw his hand from the flood-gate, it would immediately fly open, and the fiery floods of the fierceness and wrath of God, would rush forth with inconceivable fury, and would come upon you with omnipotent power; and if your strength were ten thousand times greater than it is, yea, ten thousand times greater than the strength of the stoutest, sturdiest devil in hell, it would be nothing to withstand or endure it.
Excerpted from the 1741 sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”