I was going through some papers recently and came across this quote. I'm not sure who wrote it, but it may have been Jeremiah Burroughs. Possibly from his book, The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment.
"We, indeed, look at things by pieces, we look at one detail and do not consider the relation that one thing has to another, but God looks at all things at once, and sees the relation that one thing has to another. When a child looks at a clock, it looks first at one wheel, and then at another wheel: he does not look at them all together or the dependence that one has upon another; but the workman has his eyes on them all together and sees the dependence of all, one upon another: so it is in God's providnce. Now notice how this works to contentment: when a certain passage of providence befalls me, that is one wheel, and it may be that if this wheel were stopped, a thousand other things might come to be stopped by this. In a clock, stop but one wheel and you stop every wheel, because they are dependent on one another. So when God has ordered a thing for the present to be thus and thus, how do you know how many things depend upon this thing? God may have some work to do twenty years hence that depends on this passage of providence that falls out this day or this week...Let me therefore be quiet and content, for though I am crossed in some particular thing God attains His end; at least, His end may be furthered in a thousand things by this thing that I am crossed in."
