I WAS lately at the bedside of a poor and absolutely helpless cripple. He was a middle-aged man, and for some five or six years had been confined to his bed with acute rheumatism. His hands and legs and body were twisted about in the most hopeless manner. My son was with me, who during the last three years had himself, more than once, been at death’s door. In fact we were, though from different causes, a trio of sufferers. Speaking together of God’s chastening, we read a little in Heb. 12:6-13. I remarked how well for us it was to remember that it was often by His ways with us that God effects His triumphs in us, by bringing us into that state of soul in which, as partakers of His holiness, the blessed God can enjoy our company and we can enjoy His. We also read Phil. 4:6, 7, and rejoiced together in the fact that, however sad our surroundings might be, we had God’s ear and His invitation to pour into that ear the tale of our sorrows, and His promise to fill our hearts with His own perfect peace.
The poor man seemed much affected, and spoke of his past waywardness and folly. My son then quoted David’s words— “Before I was afflicted I went astray,” and asked a question which his own mother was once asked by a dear servant of the Lord when she was in great suffering, and in an illness which proved fatal.
“When is the tree nearest to the gardener?”
“When he is pruning it.”
“Ah,” said the poor fellow, “that reminds me of when I was working as a gardener. A lady asked me to prune some fruit trees in a certain way, and when I objected she said, ‘Grub them up then!’ And if God had grubbed me up, instead of pruning me, I should have been lost forever!”
Reader, how is it with you? Perhaps you are living to gratify the desire of the flesh and of the mind, pursuing a course of self-will in a forgetfulness of God that can only end in disaster—overwhelming eternal disaster.
What if God were to say of you as He said of Ephraim once— “Ephraim is joined to idols: let him alone”? It may be God has spoken to you already. Perhaps by His Spirit He has spoken more than once through His Word, or by sickness or bereavement, or by loss of one sort or another. Remember, it is bad enough to break God’s laws, but it is ten thousand times worse to resist His Spirit, despise His merciful dealings, neglect His Word, and remain indifferent to the grace that sent His Son into this world, and to the suffering love of Jesus. He died that the prey might be taken from the mighty, and the lawful captive delivered, so that the ransomed soul might say exultingly, “My soul is escaped as a bird out of the snare of the fowler: the snare is broken and I am escaped” (Psa. 124:7).
Have you done yet what the prodigal son did when “he came to himself”? Have you submitted to God and entered into eternal blessing? Or are you still indifferent and trifling with your soul?
“There is a time, we know not when;
A point, we know not where:
That marks the destiny of men
To glory or despair.
“There is a line, by us unseen,
Which crosses every path;
The hidden boundary between
God’s patience and His wrath.”
T. O.