The Crook in the Lot by Thomas Boston is a real Puritan classic that I just happened to put in my Amazon shopping cart to get free shipping last month, but I am glad that I did! And I want to encourage you to get a copy of this one, and treasure it for the true gem that it is.

Boston wrote this book as an in-depth contemplation of Ecclesiastes 7:13, which says:

Consider the work of God: who can make straight what He has made crooked?

As Christians we encounter a variety of difficult circumstances and situations in our lives (or our ‘lot’). For some people, the difficulty in our lot may be seen in physical problems with our bodies (i.e. health problems, illness, deformities, weakness, barrenness, beauty, etc.). For other people it may deal with their honor, or the failure to receive the honor and respect due to them. Still others may deal with difficulty in their vocations and stations in this world, whether it is ongoing difficulty on their job, frustrated hopes and expectations, or even a desire to do something else while you have to remain where you are. And another area of difficulty for many people lies in their relationships with family, friends, the world, and even the Church. However, as Boston continuously points out, it does not matter where your ‘crook’ is in your lot of life, it is of highest importance that we, as Christians, have the proper view of these difficulties and look upon them with the eye of faith, not just by our natural senses. And with a proper view, these difficulties will become advantageous to us as we learn how to adjust our deportment (loved that word) under them.

If I had to capture the main points of this book, they would be:

1. The hand of God is unmistakably involved in every aspect of our lives, both small and great. If He has decided to put a crook, or a difficulty, in some aspect of your life, you will not be able to change or alter that difficulty until He wills it to change. So you ought to quiet yourself with the knowledge that regardless of the difficulty, God is directly involved and is using this for your good in Him.
2. Humility is of the utmost necessity in the Christian life, and if you will be loved and cared for by God, you must learn humility. However, humility is oftentimes very hard to come by in the Christian life because we wrestle with lofty opinions of ourselves and what we are due. Thus, God teaches us humility through the crooks in our lot, and His aim is to make this a thorough work. So, though we may be content to just deal with our various difficulties in life and work through them, looking for better days ahead, God desires that we learn how to lower our spirits down to our lots so that we indeed calm and quiet our souls as a weaned child with its mother (Psalm 131). The lowering down of our spirits in the midst of crooks is probably the hardest lesson to learn for the Christian; however, it yields the sweetest fruits.
3. As we perform the duties of humility, we have this promise from the Lord that He will raise us up out of our difficulties (straighten the crooks) in due season. The due season happens at different times for each Christian, as the Lord sees fit. And there are some crooks that will not be straighten until we close our eyes for the last time and take our last breath. Nevertheless, we can trust that the Lord will exalt the humble at the appointed time, not a moment too late and not a second too soon.

There is so much more I can say about this book, but I will just end with this last point:

In these days, there is so much discontentment and dissatisfaction among people with their lot in life, even among professing Christians. Protests, rallies, blogs, and social media blasts abound as people take to voicing all of their problems with a variety of things around them that may or may not be actually affecting them. Nevertheless, the issues of fairness, equality, privilege, and rights dominate the news, and I found this book to be an extra tether for my soul, a balm for my aching mind, and a sweet, familiar melody to my heart that reminded me of the very basic things that I learned at the very beginning of my Christian walk. That is, we may not understand the ‘why’ behind all of the things in our lives right now, but we will understand them all better by and by.

Brothers and sisters, I pray that you get your hands on this book soon, and may you see with the eyes of faith in all of your crooks that the Lord has allotted to you.