The School of Disappointment

This week, I came across this gem of a meditation by John Newton (author of Amazing Grace). Newton reminds us that in God’s economy, disappointment is not merely a loss, but a lesson—and how regularly we need this lesson! “We cannot be safe,” he says, unless “we are weaned from our own wills.” Few things are more common, and difficult, than the disappointments we encounter. Our “schemes look so plausible”! But, we will find, over time, that it is an “unspeakable mercy” that he manages our affairs. He sees what we cannot. If we could see what He sees, we would find we agree. Yet, for now, not seeing, we trust.

It is indeed natural to us to wish and to plan, and it is merciful in the Lord to disappoint our plans, and to cross our wishes. For we cannot be safe, much less happy, but in proportion as we are weaned from our own wills, and made simply desirous of being directed by his guidance.

This truth is sufficiently familiar…but we seldom learn to reduce it into practice, without being trained awhile in the school of disappointment. The schemes we form look so plausible and convenient, that when they are broken we are ready to say, What a pity! We try again, and with no better success; we are grieved, and perhaps angry, and plan out another, and so on: at length, in a course of time, experience and observation begin to convince us, that we are not more able than we are worthy to choose aright for ourselves.

Then the Lord’s invitation to cast our cares upon him, and his promise to take care of us, appear valuable; and when we have done planning, his plan in our favour gradually opens, and he does more and better for us than we could either ask or think. I can hardly recollect a single plan of mine, of which I have not since seen reason to be satisfied, that, had it taken place in season and circumstance just as I proposed, it would, humanly speaking, have proved my ruin; or, at least, it would have deprived me of the greater good the Lord had designed for me.

We judge things by their present appearances, but the Lord sees them in their consequences; if we could do likewise, we should be perfectly of his mind; but as we cannot, it is an unspeakable mercy that he will manage for us, whether we are pleased with his management or not; and it is spoken of as one of his heaviest judgments, when he gives any person or people up to the way of their own hearts, and to walk after their own counsels.

—John Newton, Jewels from John Newton, Daily Readings from the Works of John Newton, May 3 (Cardiphonia: Letters to Miss Perry, [2:226]; 2:71).