Vicissitudes

Luke 12:6

“Are not five sparrows sold for two farthings, and not one of them is forgotten before God?” 

Luke 12:7

“But even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not therefore: ye are of more value than many sparrows.” 

Change is constant. We live through the vicissitudes of the seasons. Through the passage of time, is either growth or death, and changes. Most of the former ubiquitous part of everyday life has changed or is gone: people, things, places, the old-fashioned godly traditions.The once sharp and spirited mind has slowed down. The once restless and passionate heart has mellowed out. The once vigorously healthy and active body has grown weary. All that is left now is the memory of a quiet, simple, slow-moving phase of the olden years.

Yet today is the appointed day of salvation -- that irresistible grace of election and justification that was there even before the beginning of time. The omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient God has willed every bit of every movement and every passage and every vicissitude of everything underneath and above the earth. It was not a meaningless, futile, miserable, and an empty existence after all. Through this wilderness, this valley of tears, glorious eternity for His jewels awaits, His jewels whom He picked up from the mire and washed clean with the precious blood of His own Son Jesus Christ.

“Oh! thus pillowing your head on the Immutability of God, amid the crude buffetings of a changing world, you will be able to say — until the dawn of the morning breaks on you, which knows neither night nor vicissitude, ‘I will both lie down and sleep in peace,  for You alone, O Lord, make me live in safety!’ (Psalm 4:8)” ~ John MacDuff"

“O my Father, let me feel, even amid the troublous changes of life, that what I am apt to call painful vicissitudes — are the sovereign degrees and allotments of your infinite wisdom!” ~John MacDuff

"Who can forecast the varying scenes of changeful life? It is like walking up some sequestered dell; every turn in the path presents something new. A cluster of flowers here--a rotten branch or decaying tree there; now a flowing stream--now a quiet pool--
now a sprawling cascade; now a gleam of sunlight, now the driving rain and booming thunder. 
But each apparently capricious turn in life's way, all its accidents and incidents, are the 
appointments of Infinite Wisdom! 
The future with all its vicissitudes, is in His keeping and ordering. You may work the loom--the shuttle may be in your hands--but the pattern is all His--the intermingling threads of varied hue, even what are dark and somber. Do not talk of a tangled web, 
when it is that of the Great Craftsman!" ~John MacDuff


“It is a practical impression of this unseen hand moving in all that happens to the believer, administering the cup of joy and of affliction, and all for his ultimate good, that throws over the soul a quiet confidence, and enables it in "every situation to be content.

The Scriptures teach that the bird that folds its wing and falls to the earth, or that is arrested by the archer's arrow and drops bleeding to the ground, is directed in its fall by the hand of God. Yes, even the hairs of our head, insignificant as they may singly seem, are still noticed and numbered by the Almighty. Not a step that we take, nor a purpose that we accomplish, do we take or accomplish independent of him.
This is the view that brings God near; that acknowledges his hand in the minutest affairs of life, and yet detracts not from his dignity as the maker and mover of the spheres. He who 'lighted' up the sun, formed the moth that bathes its beauteous wing in the bright sunbeam; and that insect's existence as truly demonstrates the infinitude of his power, as does the great fountain of light in whose radiance it rejoices.” ~Jared Waterbury

“All other things have changed—all other things are changing. The sun itself grows dim with age. The world is waxing old—the heavens and earth must soon pass away and perish! There is One alone, who has immortality—of whose years there is no end, and in whose person there is no change.” ~Charles Spurgeon