HIS HEART AND HIS HAND
HIS HEART AND HIS HAND
Do you seek solace from Christ’s sympathy as much as or more than you do from the interference of His hand? Is it His heart or His hand which comforts you most? If He had not come down and walked beside us in all our circumstances down here, He could not have sympathised with us; He could not have made us feel His heart for us. He might have stood at a distance and have stretched out His hand as Moses did, when with his rod he smote the waters of the Red Sea; but Christ came down here, walked on the waters, and said to Peter, Come, to where He was. He walked beside Mary going to the grave of Lazarus, and wept as He went. It was His heart He was unfolding in that walk! It was His hand when He called Lazarus out of the grave. If He were to come and relieve you by His hand out of every pressure of health or circumstances, and order things for you, you would after all be only a solitary unit in your good health, or with your improved circumstances; but if you are relieved and comforted by His heart - His sympathy - you have made an acquaintance with Him personally, and you have all the comfort and cheer of enjoying His company in your dreariness; so that adverse circumstances with Him are better than happy ones without Him. It is better to have His company in the desert, like the disciples, or on the cross, like the thief, than to be a solitary Adam in paradise. The brightest things cannot perfectly relieve the heart. It is His heart only that can relieve; and this is known when no other heart could or would know how to draw near and bear one [p. 152] company. Surely company is better than comforts. It is with sorrow only here that He can sympathise, for there is nothing of God in the joys of man.
It was need at the marriage feast (John 2) which drew out His hand. Nothing but His hand would suit that, but in the second miracle at Cana, His heart entered into the sorrow of the father; and when He said, “Thy son liveth”, the hand of mercy won the heart and faith of the father and of his house.
You must practise yourself in learning His heart; you must learn how He would act in your circumstances, for He is beside you when you are toiling in rowing; and if you become more sensible of His being beside you, and that He Himself has gone through every sorrow that a godly one could endure, you will, as you look for it, find a solace in His sympathy - in His heart, which no interference of His hand could obtain for you. Better for you to be at —— wanting the Lord every moment, and finding Him near you every moment, than if you were in the brightest scene, where you could draw on things around for your enjoyment, and where according as you had power in yourself you would be able to appropriate the beauties around you. Seek to learn and to enjoy the interest which Christ takes in you, and you will find that, like the rock to Israel, He follows you, and makes up for your lack, by the streams that gladden the city of God.