Forget About Wallets: 'What's in your ship?'

I find myself returning to this quote more than my life of ease might suggest is necessary. May we be diligently doing the hard work of filling our ships with weighty ballast while the seas of life are calm!

"Pain and loss are bitter providences. Who has lived long in this world of woe without weeping, sometimes until the head throbs and there are no more tears to lubricate the convulsing of our amputated love? But O, the folly of trying to lighten the ship of suffering by throwing God's governance overboard. The very thing the tilting ship needs in the storm is the ballast of God's good sovereignty, not the unburdening of deep and precious truth. What makes the crush of calamity sufferable is not that God shares our shock, but that his bitter providences are laden with the bounty of love."

--John Piper