A HOME ABOVE, AND A GRAVE HERE
A HOME ABOVE, AND A GRAVE HERE
There are two things which constitute a saint’s happiness according as they are known simultaneously. The one is, that he has a home and life outside of this scene; the other, that he has a grave and dies in this scene.
[p. 185] If I have not a home - a retreat, known to my soul in heaven, and an assured sense that Christ is my life there, I must, like the raven, though once in the ark, seek for something to solace me here. The real reason why I find it hard that my only possession here should be a grave, is that I have not an abiding sense of a home in heaven, of enjoying life there in all its wondrous perennial virtues and delights. If I do not walk in the truth, the path of wisdom, I am made to encounter rebuffs and rebukes in order to force me into the way, which is the one of pleasantness and peace. The truth is, we have a home in heaven and Christ is our life there; and if this be not simply enjoyed, there will be an attempt to modify the desolation here, and an inability to interpret the varied inroads which death makes on us. It is plain that if I have a home and life outside of this scene, I cannot have either in it, and consequently as I enjoy by faith the one, I see that it is only consistent that there should be neither here, and I become a Caleb, and find a throne at Hebron, where my father Abraham had only a grave! There is death before quickening, though we through Christ enjoy the quickening before we die morally, but it is as we die, that we are confirmed in life. The proof that I enjoy my home and life in heaven is shewn in the way that I accept the grave here. If I am walking by faith, nothing visible will suit me, for the visible comes not within the domain of faith. A man who has emigrated and has found a new home, and happy associations, does not lament that the sea rolls between him and his former domicile of sorrow and privation; but if his satisfaction in the new home flags, he will sigh for the old. So it is with the saint; when his faith and enjoyment in his home above wane, like Israel in the wilderness, he remembers and longs for the choice things of Egypt.
Every growth begins in summer, and the stronger it grows in summer, the better it is prepared for the winter. The defect with souls is, not that they bear the winter [p. 186] so badly, but that they have enjoyed the summer so little. They have not made their own of the season and clime which is suited for them, and without which there is no growth, so they are not prepared for the winter; and there is an effort to assuage the bitterness of winter when it comes, instead of having, like the ant, prepared in summer for the trials of winter. The growth is in summer -the endurance is in winter. Summer is my home and my life-time, winter is the testing time. If I have known the bright happy sunshine of summer, I am invigorated and ready for the dark bleak days of winter. Fine days in winter add really nothing to my growth. It is when winter is past and the rain over and gone, that the flowers appear and the singing of the birds is heard. It is the one who does not know that the summer is his only season - his only time for growth and fruitfulness - that pines for mild weather in winter. There will be a double defect in the soul unless it sees by faith on the one hand the perfection of the home and life in heaven, and on the other, the universal desolation here because of the rejection of God’s Son who is our life in heaven.
Properly you are the dove who has found a retreat in the ark, and from thence you can fly out and survey the wave of death rolling over the earth, and accepting it, return again to the ark, and to the hand that is stretched out to receive you to the retreat which He has formed for you.