Lord, If It Pleases You, It Pleases Me

My friend, Jessica, has shared some lovely thoughts (from Nancy Leigh DeMoss) on meekness over on her blog.
Definitely worth the read!
"...Meekness says, 'Lord if it pleases You, it pleases me. I don’t have to understand. I don’t have to agree. But I accept; I receive the choices that You have brought into my life.' "

Read the rest on Jessica's blog:
Meekness

On Meekness

I've been enjoying Matthew Henry's book,
The Quest for Meekness and Quietness of Spirit.

Pg. 73 -

[Meekness] makes us fit for any relation which God in His providence may call us into. Those who are quiet themselves cannot but be easy to all that are about them; and the nearer they are to us in relation and converse, the more desirable it is that we should be easy to them. Relations are various as superiors, inferiors, and equals; he that is of a meek and quiet spirit is cut out for any of them. Moses was forty years a courtier in Egypt, forty years a servant in Midian, and forty years a king in Jeshurun; and his meekness qualified him for each of these posts, and still he held fast his integrity....
Meekness would greatly help to preserve the wisdom and due authority of superiors, the obedience and due subjection of inferiors, and the love and mutual kindness and serviceableness of equals. A calm and quiet spirit receives the comfort of the relation most thankfully, studies the duty of the relation most carefully, and bears the inconvenience of the relation (for there is no unmixed comfort under the sun) most cheerfully and easily.

[Meekness] makes us fit for any condition according as the wise God shall please to dispose of us. Those that through grace are enabled to compose and quiet themselves are fit to live in this world, where we meet with so much every day to discompose and disquiet us....Prosperity and adversity have each of them their particular temptation to peevishness and frowardness; the former by making men imperious, the latter by making men impatient. Against the assaults of each of these temptations the grace of meekness will stand on guard. Being able to pass through this world "by honor and dishonor, by evil report and good report," that is, through a great variety of conditions and treatments, we have need that long-suffering and kindness, and love unfeigned, which will be the armor of righteousness on the right hand and the left (II Cor. 6:6-8) ....It is the continual happiness of a quiet temper to make the best of that which is.

Matthew Henry on Anger

I'm slowly working my way through Matthew Henry's book, "The Quest for Meekness and Quietness of Spirit", written in 1698.
It is so deep and so rich that one can only read a page or two at a time to properly assimilate what he has to say.

On anger he says:

When our hearts are at any time hot within us we should do well to put that question to ourselves which God put to Cain,
"Why am I wroth?" (Gen. 14:6).
Why am I angry at all?
Why so soon angry?
Why so very angry?
Why so far transported and dispossessed of myself by my anger?
What reason is there for all of this?
"Do I well to be angry for a gourd that came up in a night, and perished in a night?" (Jonah 4:6)
Should I be touched to the quick by such a sudden and transient provocation?
Will not my cooler thoughts correct these hasty resentments, and therefore were it not better to check them now?

Such are the reasonings of the meekness of wisdom.