In the school of affliction, God teaches us how to prize our outward mercies and comforts more and yet to dote upon them less. We are taught to be more thankful for them and yet less ensnared by them. Naturally we are very prone either to slight or to surfeit God's blessings. And yet (sad to consider) we can often do both at once! We can undervalue our mercies, even while we glut ourselves with them! We can despise them, even when we are surfeiting upon them.
Behold while men fill themselves with the mercies of God, they can neglect the God of their mercies! When God is most liberal in remembering us then we are most ungrateful to forget Him. Therefore that we may know how to put a due estimate upon mercies, God may cut them off, that we may learn to prize by the lack of mercies, that which our foolish unthankful hearts slighted in the enjoyment of them. Now this ungrateful distemper, God many times cures by the sharp corrosive of affliction!
Thus the prodigal, who while yet at home could despise the rich and well furnished table of his father; when God sent him to school to the swine-trough would have gladly filled his belly with the pods which he was feeding to the swine!
When months and years of God's mercies and blessings are passed through, we scarcely take one grateful view of them; we seldom send up one thankful prayer to God for them. We pass by our mercies as common things, scarcely worth the owning. Whereas in times of famine, the lees and dregs of those mercies will be precious, which while the vessel ran full and fresh, we could hardly relish. In famine the very gleanings of our comforts are better than the whole vintage in the years of plenty!
In the withdrawing of common mercies, God will teach us their inestimable worth.
[Thomas Case]
Deuteronomy 8:10-14 … When thou hast eaten and art full, then thou shalt bless the Lord thy God for the good land which he hath given thee. Beware that thou forget not the Lord thy God, in not keeping his commandments, and his judgments, and his statutes, which I command thee this day: Lest when thou hast eaten and art full, and hast built goodly houses, and dwelt therein; 13 And when thy herds and thy flocks multiply, and thy silver and thy gold is multiplied, and all that thou hast is multiplied; Then thine heart be lifted up, and thou forget the Lord thy God, which brought thee forth out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage;
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