Would it be good to have everything you desire?

Is suffering inherently bad?  Would it not be better to have every good thing we desire?

Charles Spurgeon, who suffered from Bright’s Disease and depression, and yet was able to maintain an amazing amount of productivity and ministry, answers:

Happily for us our happiness does not depend upon our understanding the providence of God: we are able to believe where we are not able to explain, and we are content to leave a thousand mysteries unsolved rather than tolerate a single doubt as to the wisdom and goodness of our heavenly Father. The painful malady which puts the Christian minister hors de combat when he is most needed in the conflict is a kind messenger from the God of love, and is to be entertained as such: this we know, but how it can be so we cannot precisely tell.

Let us consider awhile. Is it not good for us to be nonplussed, and puzzled, and so forced to exercise faith? Would it be well for us to have all things so ordered that we ourselves could see the reason for every dispensation? Could the scheme of divine love be indeed supremely, infinitely, wise if we could measure it with our short line of reason? Should we not ourselves remain as foolish and conceited as spoiled and petted children, if all things were arranged according to our judgment of what would be fit and proper?

Ah, it is well to be cast out of our depth, and made to swim in the sweet waters of mighty love! We know that it is supremely blessed to be compelled to cease from self, to surrender both wish and judgment, and to lie passive in the hands of God. [from “Laid Aside.  Why?” in The Sword and the Trowel, 1876.]