The everlasting arms!',
Back to Treasures from J.R. Miller
So frail is human strength, though behind it is tenderer, truest love. All that love can do, all that money can do, all that skill can do — avail 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 arethe 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 tried to save his child in the waves — frantically clasping his arms around the beloved 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 imperilled child of God. Sorrow is very deep — but in the greatest grief, theseeverlasting 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," 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 you who today are reading these words and trying to learn the lesson, God says, "Underneath you are now, this moment, every moment, the everlasting arms!"