How to drown your sorrows

From Spurgeon’s “ The Immutability of God:”

It has been said by some one that “the proper study of mankind is man.” I will not oppose the idea, but I believe it is equally true that the proper study of God’s elect is God; the proper study of a Christian is the Godhead. The highest science, the loftiest speculation, the mightiest philosophy, which can ever engage the attention of a child of God, is the name, the nature, the person, the work, the doings, and the existence of the great God whom he calls his Father. There is something exceedingly improving to the mind in a contemplation of the Divinity. It is a subject so vast, that all our thoughts are lost in its immensity; so deep, that our pride is drowned in its infinity.
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And, whilst humbling and expanding, this subject is eminently consolatary. Oh, there is, in contemplating Christ, a balm for every wound; in musing on the Father, there is a quietus for every grief; and in the influence of the Holy Ghost, there is a balsam for every sore. Would you lose your sorrows? Would you drown your cares? Then go plunge yourself in the Godhead’s deepest sea; be lost in his immensity; and you shall come forth as from a couch of rest, refreshed and invigorated. I know nothing which can so comfort the soul, so calm the swelling billows of grief and sorrow; so speak peace to the winds of trial, as a devout musing upon the subject of the Godhead.

I can vouch for this truth. When my spirits are low, I’ve read the lament psalms and found them to be little comfort. But in reading the royal psalms, or God’s answer to Job, or one of Paul’s doxologies I have found that my problems will seem suddenly distant and small. Those things of Earth that grow strangely dim definitely include the troubles of the mortal life. In magnifying God, my spirits are lifted. When God looks bigger, my trials look smaller.

(Recommended reading: Here Ed Welch recommends reading Job 38-42 every day for a month – “If you read these chapters every day for a month you will find that they are a treatment for almost anything.” HT: Justin Taylor)