Comfort from the thought of Heaven

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MW

Puritanboard Amanuensis
"Destined as we are for heaven, shall we grieve or murmur that the earth is not found to be a suitable resting-place for immortal beings, and that God checks every tendency to rest here, by sharp afflictions and severe disappointment? God forbid! Heaven, seen even in the distance, should allure us onwards, and its glorious light should cast a cheering ray over the darkest passages of life. Nay, not only should the hope of heaven prevent us from complaining of the afflictions of life, but the thought that these afflictions are even now preparing us for that blessed state – that they are ordained as necessary and useful means of discipline to promote our progress towards it – that they are the furnace by which the dross is to be purged away, and the pure ore fitted for the Master’s use in the upper sanctuary – should reconcile us to resigned submission, should make us grateful, that such discipline being needful, it has not been withheld, and to pray earnestly that it may be so blessed for our use, as that we shall, in due time, be presented faultless and blameless before the presence of God’s glory, with exceeding joy." – James Buchanan (Comfort in Affliction).
 
Matthew, I came across this quote from Matthew Henry last evening when I was prepping on the Gospel of John:

But those whose time is filled up with duty will often find themselves straitened, and they have not yet time for that which others can do at any time.

Your quote from Buchanan dove tails nicely with Henry's. This life is accompanied with much affliction and disappointment, which is exasperated by idleness and unprofitable excess. So, while this life may be filled with toil and pain, it is best to be busy doing the Master's work, and thus, have our minds dwell on the glories that await us.
 
Go up to the top of Pisgah and lift up your eyes westward and northward and southward and eastward, and look at it with your eyes, for you shall not go over this Jordan.(Deut. 3:27, ESV)

But we know from God's Word that we will go over our Jordan to our Promised Land. The antitypical benefits of spiritually-speaking going up to the top of Mount Pisgah on a regular basis are far greater for us than the benefits that Moses could have enjoyed from his viewing.
 
Looking forward to the things unseen is what keeps me going. Without God's promises and encouragement from his word, this past year would have buried me.
 
When a saint dies, he has no cause at all to grieve because he leaves his friends and relations whom he dearly loves; for he doth not properly leave them, he enjoys them still in Christ, because every thing that they love in them and love them for, is in Christ to an infinite degree, whether it be nearness of relations, or any perfection and good received, or love in us, or a likeness in dispositions, or whatever is a rational ground of love.

-Jonathan Edwards, Miscellaneous Observations on Heaven
 
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