In Perfect Peace'. 2
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A beautiful story is told of Rudyard Kipling during a serious illness a few years since. The nurse was sitting at his bedside on one of the anxious nights when the sick man's condition was most critical. She was watching him intently and noticed that his lips began to move. She bent over him, thinking he wished to say something to her. She heard him whisper very softly the words of the old familiar prayer of childhood, "Now I lay me down to sleep." The nurse, realizing that her patient did not require her services, and that he was praying, said in apology for having intruded upon him, "I beg your pardon, Mr. Kipling; I thought you wanted something." "I do," faintly replied the sick man; "I want my heavenly Father. He only can care for me now." In his great weakness there was nothing that human help could do, and he turned to God and crept into his bosom, seeking the blessing and the care which none but God can give. That is what we need to do in every time of danger, of trial, of sorrow—when the gentlest human love can do nothing—creep into our heavenly Father's bosom, saying, "Now I lay me down to sleep." That is the way to peace. Earth has no shelter in which true peace can be found—but in God the feeblest may find it.
A passenger on an ocean steamer, exposed for three days to a winter's cyclone of terrific violence, was standing on the deck in one of the fiercest moments of the storm, and saw a little sea bird flutter an instant in the face of the gale, and then settle down on a wave and fold its wings in restful quiet. So may the believer in Christ do in the darkest hour of trial. "Let not your heart be troubled," said the Master; "believe in God; believe also in me."
This is the one great lesson of Christian faith—"Believe." "Into your hands I commit my spirit." "You will keep him in perfect peace—whose mind is stayed on you." Stayed on you!These words tell the whole story. They picture a child nestling in the mother's bosom, letting its whole little weight down upon her. It has no fear, and nothing disturbs it, for the mother's love is all about it. "Stayed" means reposing. It suggests also—the thought of continuousness of trust and abiding. Too much of our trust is broken and intermittent, this hour singing—the next hour in tears, dismayed. If we would have unbroken peace—we must have unbroken trust, our minds stayed upon God all the while.
God is strong, omnipotent. We need not fear that his power to keep us will ever fail. There never is a moment when he is not able to sustain us. When the question is asked, "From whence shall my help come?" the answer is, "My help comes from Jehovah, who made heaven and earth!" He who made all the worlds and keeps them all in being—can surely bear up one little human life and protect it from harm.
God is wise. We are not wise enough to direct the affairs of our own lives, even if we had the power to shape things to our minds. Our outlook is limited—cut off by life's close horizons. We do not know what the final outcome of this or that choice would be. Ofttimes the things we think we need, and think would bring us happiness and good—would only work us harm in the end. Things we dread and shrink from, supposing they would bring us hurt and evil—are ofttimes the bearers of rich blessings to us. We are not wise enough to choose our own circumstances, or to guide our own affairs. Only God can do this for us. He not only has strength—he has also knowledge of us—and of our needs—and of our dangers. He knows all about us—our condition, our suffering, our trials, our griefs, the little things that vex us, as well as the great things that would crush us.
God is love. Strength alone would not be enough. Strength is not always gentle. A tyrant may be strong, but we would not care to entrust our life to him. We crave affection, tenderness. God is love. His gentleness is infinite. The hands into which we are asked to commit our spirit—are wounded hands—wounded in saving us! The heart over which we are asked to nestle—is the heart that was broken on the cross in love for us! We need not fear to stay ourselves on such a being.
God is eternal. Human love is very sweet. A mother's bosom is a wondrously gentle place for a child to nestle in. The other day two letters came from the same hospital. One was from a young wife, married only last summer, now fighting a battle with cancer. She wrote hopefully, referring to the many hemorrhages she had had, but saying that now she was surely recovering. She then spoke of her desire to get well enough to go home soon to her husband. "Surely He will not separate us so early," she wrote; "We are so happy together!" The other letter was from the sick woman's friend who is with her. She wrote that the doctors have no hope of her recovery.
So frail is human strength, though behind it is tenderest, truest love. All that love can do, all that money can do, all that skill can do—avails nothing. Human arms may clasp us very firmly, yet their clasp cannot keep us from the power of disease—or from the cold hand of death. But the love and strength of God are everlasting. Nothing can ever separate us from him. An Old Testament promise reads: "The eternal God is your refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms." Deuteronomy 33:27. If we are stayed upon the eternal God, nothing ever can disturb us, for nothing can disturb him on whom we are reposing. If we are held in the clasp of his everlasting arms, we need not fear that we shall ever be separated from the enfolding.
The position of the everlasting arms in this picture is suggestive—"Underneath." They are always underneath us. No matter how low we sink, in weakness, in faintness, in pain, in sorrow—we never can sink below these everlasting arms. We never can drop out of their clasp. A father tired to save his child in the waves, wildly clasping his arms around the loved child. But his arms, though nerved by most passionate love, were too weak, and the child slipped away from them and sank down in the dark waters. But evermore, in the deepest floods, the everlasting arms will be underneath the feeblest, most imperiled child of God. Sorrow is very deep—but still and forever, in the greatest grief, these arms of love are underneath the sufferer. Then when death comes, and every earthly support is gone from beneath us, when every human arm unclasps and every face of love fades from before our eyes, and we sink away into what seems darkness and the shadow of death—we shall only sink into the everlasting arms underneath us.
The word "are," too, must not be overlooked—"Underneath are the everlasting arms." This is one of the wonderful present tenses of the Bible. To every trusting believer, to each one, in all the ages, to you who today are reading these words and trying to learn the lesson, as well as to those to whom the words were first spoken, God says, "Underneath you are now, this moment, every moment, the everlasting arms!"
"Whose mind is stayed on you." That is the final secret of peace. The reason so many of us do not find the blessing, and are disturbed so often by such trifles of care or sorrow orloss—is because our minds are not stayed on God. We are distressed by every little disappointment, by every failure in plan or expectation of ours, by every hardness in our circumstances or our condition, by every trivial loss of money, as if money were life's sole dependence, as if man lived by bread alone. A trifling illness frightens us. The most trivial things in our common life disturb us and send us off into pitiable fits of anxiety, spoiling our days for us, blotting the blue of the sky and putting out the stars! The trouble is, we are not trusting God—our minds are not stayed on him! That is what we need to learn—to rest in the Lord—to be silent before him—to commit our way to him.
Paul puts it very clearly in a remarkable passage, in which he tells us how to find peace. "In nothing be anxious." That is the first part of the lesson. "Nothing" means really nothing. There are to be no exceptions. No matter what comes—in nothing be anxious. Do not try to imagine that your case is peculiar and that you may rightly be anxious, even if others have no reason for worry. "In nothing be anxious." No excuse is left to any believer in Christ, who would claim a right to be anxious. It is our privilege and duty to be always free from anxiety—and to show the sad world only victorious joy!
What then shall we do with the things that would naturally make us anxious? For there are such things in every life. Here is the answer: "In everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God." Instead of carrying your trials and troubles yourself, the things which would fret and vex you, and worrying about them—take them to God, not forgetting to mingle praise and thanksgiving with your requests. Get them altogether out of your hands—into God's hands—and leave them there!
That is the lesson we should learn—the duty of peace and the secret of peace. It is the duty of every Christian to have peace. Not to have it—is to reject the Master's bequest—"Peace I leave with you—My peace I give unto you." It is to refuse his gracious gift—a gift he died for, so that he could give to us. Not to have peace is to fail to have the fruit of the Spirit in our lives, for part of this fruit is peace. Everyone of us should have peace. If we don't have it—we are living below our privileges; we are missing one of the great blessings of salvation!
That is one part of our lesson. The other is that we can only get this peace by having our minds stayed on God, that God may keep us in peace. For even he cannot keep us—unless we put ourselves into his hands and leave ourselves there. The staying upon God is our part in securing the blessing which is promised. It must be a voluntary reposing. It must be an unbroken confiding. To trust and sing today, and then to fear and doubt tomorrow, is not the way to find perfect peace. "Trust in the Lord forever," is the lesson that is set for us.
Then the peace never shall be broken. It may be disturbed for a little while by some sudden trial or sorrow, or by overwhelming trouble; but God very gently helps back into the nest, those who have been thrown out of it by any such experience. One day President Lincoln and a friend were walking together beside a hedgerow, and came upon a little bird fluttering in the grass. It had fallen out of its nest in the bushes and could not get back again. The great, gentle hearted man stopped in his walk, picked up the little thing, sought along the hedge until he found the nest, and put the bird back again into its place. That is what Christ is seeking to do every day with lives that have been jostled out of the nest of peace. With hand infinitely gentle, he would ever help us back to the peace we have lost.
The staying of the mind upon God suggests repose. We are to let ourselves down upon his strength, into the arms of his love—and to rest there, without fear, without worry, without question. But this does not mean that we shall drop our tasks and duties out of our hands. Always, in every exhortation to trust God, obedience is implied and presupposed. "Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness," said the Master. When we do this, he continued, we need never be anxious, for then all our needs shall be supplied. It is only in the faithful doing of God's will—that true peace ever can be found. We cannot commit either ourselves or our affairs to God—unless we have done our own part faithfully or are ready to do it.
Far more really than we think, is work a helper of peace. The will of God is to be done, not only suffered, as some people seem to think, but done in unbroken obedience and service. Work is a law of life, and no life can be truly healthy which is not active. Work thus becomes a means of grace. We grow under burdens. Exercise develops the faculties.
There is a satisfaction also in the consciousness of having faithfully done one's duty and performed one's part in the world, which is an essential element of peace. Love is the law of spiritual life. We do not begin to live in any worthy sense—until we have learned to love and to serve others. Selfishness is always a hinderer of peace. Peace is the music which the life makes, when it is in perfect tune, and this can only be—when all its chords are attuned to the keynote of love.
We can stay our minds upon God only when the will of God has been done by us—or endured patiently and cheerfully. The bosom of God is a holy place, and nothing unholy ever can nestle there. No disturbed conscience can find quiet there. There must be peace in the heart, first—or even leaning on Christ's breast will not impart peace. Only thus can any one find perfect peace. Even God cannot give it to one nestling in the shelter of his love, whose heart is filled with strifes, or with fears, or with reprovings of conscience. The peace must be in us—or we cannot be kept in peace.
Peace gives such blessedness to the heart, and is such an adornment to the life—that no one ever should be willing to miss it. Whatever other graces God has bestowed upon us, we should not be content without this, the most beautiful of them all. However beautiful a character may be, if it has not peace—it lacks the highest charm of spiritual adornment. And the Master is willing to bestow upon the lowliest of us, the divinest of all graces—peace, his own blessed peace!
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