Every Good and Every Perfect Gift Is from Above
EVERY GOOD AND EVERY PERFECT GIFT
IS FROM ABOVE24 [III 35]
PRAYER [III 37]
From your hand, O God, we are willing to receive everything. You reach it out, your mighty hand, and catch the wise in their foolishness.25 You open it, your gentle hand, and satisfy with blessing everything that lives.26 And even if it seems that your arm is shortened, increase our faith27 and our trust so that we might still hold fast to you. And if at times it seems that you draw your hand away from us, oh, then we know it is only because you close it, that you close it only to save the more abundant blessing in it, that you close it only to open it again and satisfy with blessing everything that lives. Amen.
The Epistle of the Apostle James, chapter 1, verses 17-22
Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no change or shadow of variation. According to his own counsel, he brought us forth by the word of truth, that we should be a first fruit of his creation. Therefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger, because a man’s anger does not work what is righteous before God. Therefore put away all filthiness and all remnants of wickedness and receive with meekness the word that is implanted in you and that is powerful for making your souls blessed.
[III 38] Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no change or shadow of variation. These words are so beautiful, so appealing, so moving, that it surely would not be the fault of the words if they found no access in the listener’s ears, no resonance in his heart. They are by one of the Lord’s apostles, and if we ourselves have not deeply perceived their meaning, we nevertheless dare to trust that they are not casual and idle words, a flowery expression of a flimsy thought, but that they are faithful and unfailing, tried and tested, as was the life of the apostle who wrote them. They are not spoken incidentally but with special emphasis, not in passing but accompanied by an urgent admonition: Do not go astray, my beloved brethren (v. 16). We dare, then, to have the confidence that they have not only the power to lift up the soul but also the strength to carry it, these words that carried an apostle through a turbulent life. They are not spoken without any bearing on other words; it is to warn against the terribly mistaken belief that God would tempt [friste] a person, to warn against the heart’s delusion that wants to tempt God, that the apostle says: Do not go astray, my beloved brethren. We dare, then, to be assured that the words are also mighty to expose delusion and mighty to halt errant thinking.
Every good and every perfect gift is from above and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no change or shadow of variation. These words have been repeated again and again in the world, and yet many people go on living as if they had never heard them, and if they had heard them, the effect on them would perhaps have been disturbing. Free from care, they go their way; a friendly fate makes everything easy for them. Every wish is fulfilled; their every enterprise prospers. Without understanding how, they are in the midst of the movement of life, a link in the chain that binds a past to a later time; unconcerned about how it happens, they are carried along on the wave of the present. Reposing in the law of nature that lets a human life grow up in the world as it spreads a carpet of flowers over the earth, they go on living happy and contented amid the changes of life, at no moment desire to tear themselves free from them and honestly give everyone his due: thankfulness to the one to whom they attribute the good gifts, help to the one they think requires it and in the [III 39] way that they think will be best for him. That there are good and perfect gifts they undoubtedly know, and they also know where they come from, because the earth gives its yield and heaven provides rain early and late,28 and their relatives and friends intend the best for them, and their plans, wise and sensible, prosper, which is natural, since they are wise and sensible. For them, life has no riddle, and yet their life is a riddle, a dream, and the apostle’s earnest admonition, “Do not go astray,” does not halt them. They have no time to pay attention to it or to the words—after all, what does the wave care about whence it comes or whither it goes?29 Or if certain ones among them, deliberating on higher things, paid attention to the apostle’s words, they would soon be finished with them. They would let their thought be occupied with them for a moment and then would say, “Now we have understood them; now bring on new thoughts that we have not understood.” Nor would they be wrong, since the apostle’s words are not difficult, and yet by wishing to abandon them after having understood them, they would demonstrate that they had not understood them.
Every good and every perfect gift is from above and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no change or shadow of variation. These words are very soothing and alleviating, and yet how many were they who really knew how to absorb the rich nourishment of comfort from them, rightly knew how to assimilate it! The troubled ones, those whom life did not allow to age and who die as children, whom it did not suckle with the milk of success but weaned early; the grieving, whose thought endeavored to penetrate through the changing to the lasting—these people were sensitive to the apostle’s words and heeded them. The more they were capable of sinking their souls into them, of forgetting everything because of them, the more they felt themselves strengthened and filled with confidence. But it was soon apparent that this strength was a deception. However much confidence they won, they still did not win the power to penetrate life; at times the troubled mind and the confused thought turned again to that rich comfort, at times they perceived the contradiction again. Finally, it may have seemed to them that these words were almost dangerous to their peace. They awakened in them a confidence that was [III 40] continually disappointed; they gave them wings that admittedly could lift them up to God but were of no help to them in their walk through life. They did not deny the inexhaustible comfort in the words, but they almost feared it even though they eulogized it. If someone owned a magnificent piece of jewelry and there was never a time when he would deny that it was magnificent, he presumably would take it out once in a while, delight in it, but soon he would say, “I cannot wear this for everyday, and it is futile to wait for the festive occasion that would really be adequate for it.” He no doubt would put the piece of jewelry away and think sadly that he possessed such a piece of jewelry and that life did not provide him with the occasion to take it out with unqualified joy.
So they sat there in quiet sorrow and did not harden themselves against the comfort in those words. They were humble enough to admit that life is a dark saying,30 and just as they in their thoughts were swift to listen for a clarifying word, so were they also slow to speak, slow to anger. They did not have the audacity to throw the words away, if only the opportune hour would come. Once it came, they would be saved, so they believed, and you, my listener, said it was bound to happen. Or is there only one spirit who witnesses in heaven and no spirit who witnesses on earth!31 Do only heaven and the spirit that flees the earth know that God is good; does life on earth know nothing of it! Is there no harmony between what happens in heaven and what happens on earth! Is there joy in heaven, only sorrow on earth, or only the news that there is joy in heaven! Does God in heaven bring out the good gifts and lay them away for us in heaven so that we can receive them sometime in the hereafter! This is the way you may have talked in your heart’s bewilderment. You did not demand that on your behalf there should be signs and miraculous acts. You did not childishly demand that every one of your wishes should be fulfilled; you only asked for a witness, be it early or late, because your troubled soul concealed a wish. If this were granted, then everything would be fine, then you would give thanks and praise forevermore, then the festive occasion would have come, then you would wholeheartedly witness to the words that all good and all perfect gifts come from above.
But see, this was denied you, and your soul became agitated, tossed about by the passion of the wish; it did not become defiant and wild, you did not impatiently throw off the leash of humility, you had not forgotten that you are on earth and God is in heaven. With humble prayers, with burning [III 41] zeal, you tried, as it were, to tempt God: This wish is so important to me; everything depends on it—my joy, my peace, my future; for me it is so very important; for God it is so easy, since he, after all, is almighty. But it was not granted. You tried in vain to calm down; in your fruitless restlessness, you tried everything; you climbed the dizzy peaks of presentiment to see whether you could spy any possibility. If you thought you spied one, you were right there with your prayers, so that with their help you could turn the apparent into actuality. But it was a mirage. You climbed down again and abandoned yourself to the anesthetizing dullness of sorrow—surely it would come in time—and morning came, and then night, but the day you desired did not break. And yet you certainly did everything; you prayed early and late, more and more fervently, more and more temptingly. Alas, and still it did not happen.
Then you renounced it; you wanted to charge your soul to be patient;32 you wanted to wait in quiet longing if only you could win a certitude that eternity would bring you your wish, bring you the delight of your eye and the craving of your heart. Alas, but this certitude, too, was denied you. But then when the busy thoughts had worked themselves weary, when your fruitless wishes had exhausted your soul, perhaps then your being grew more calm, perhaps then your mind, secretly and imperceptibly, developed in itself the meekness that is receptive to the word that was implanted within you and that was capable of blessing your soul, the word that all good and all perfect gifts come from above. Then no doubt you confessed in all humility that God surely did not deceive you when he accepted your earthly wishes and foolish desires, exchanged them for you and instead gave you divine comfort and holy thoughts; that he did not treat you unfairly when he denied you a wish but in compensation created this faith in your heart, when instead of a wish, which, even if it would bring everything, at most was able to give you the whole world, he gave you a faith by which you won God and overcame the whole world.33 Then you acknowledged with humble joy that God was still the almighty Creator of heaven and earth, who not only created the world from nothing but did something even more marvelous—from your impatient and inconstant heart he created the imperishable substance of a quiet spirit.34 Then you confessed with shame that it was good, so very good for you that God did not let himself be tempted; then you comprehended the apostle’s admonition [III 42] and why it is linked to the fallacy of wanting to tempt God. Then you perceived how foolish your behavior was. You wanted God’s ideas about what was best for you to coincide with your ideas, but you also wanted him to be the almighty Creator of heaven and earth so that he could properly fulfill your wish. And yet, if he were to share your ideas, he would cease to be the almighty Father. In your childish impatience, you wanted, so to speak, to distort God’s eternal nature, and you were blinded enough to delude yourself, as if you would be benefited if God in heaven did not know better than you yourself what was beneficial for you, as if you would not some day discover to your horror that you had wished what no human being would be able to endure if it happened.
Let us for a moment speak foolishly and in a human way.35 Suppose there was someone whom you really trusted because you believed he had your welfare at heart; but you had one idea of what was beneficial for you, and he had another. Then would you not try to persuade him? You would perhaps plead with him and implore him to grant your wish. But when he persisted in his refusal, you would stop imploring him and you would say: If by my pleas I moved him to do what he did not consider to be right, then something even more terrible would happen. I would have been weak enough to make him just as weak; then I would have lost him and my trust in him, although in the moment of intoxication I would have called his weakness love.
Or perhaps this was not the case with you; perhaps you were too old to nourish childish ideas about God, too mature to think humanly about him; you perhaps wished to move him by your defiance. You probably admitted that life was a dark saying, but you were not, in keeping with the apostle’s admonition, swift to hear a clarifying word; contrary to his admonition, you were swift to anger. If life is a dark saying, then so be it; you would not trouble yourself about the explanation—and your heart grew hard. Externally you may have been calm, perhaps friendly, your conversation even benevolent, but internally, in the secret workshop of your thoughts, you said—no, you did not say it, but there you heard a voice say: God does tempt a person. And the chill of despair froze your spirit, and its death brooded over your heart. If at times [III 43] life stirred again in your inner being, savage voices raged there, voices that were not your own but nevertheless came from your inner being. Why was your complaint so vehement, your scream so penetrating; why was even your prayer so aggressive? Was it not because you believed that your sufferings were so great, your griefs so crushing, and consequently your complaint so legitimate, your voice so powerful that it was bound to resound through the heavens and call God out of his hidden depths, where it seemed to you he sat calm and indifferent and ignored the world and its vicissitudes? But heaven shuts itself off to such presumptuous talk, and it is also written that God is not tempted by anyone.36 Your words were powerless, as powerless as your thought, as powerless as your arm, and heaven did not hear your prayer; but when you then humbled yourself under God’s mighty hand37 and, crushed in spirit, sighed: My God, my God, great is my sin, too great to be forgiven—then heaven opened again, then God, as a prophet38 writes, looked down39 from his window at you and said: Yet a little while;40 yet a little while and I shall renew the countenance of the earth41—and see, your countenance was renewed, and God’s compassionate grace had loved forth [fremelsket]42 in your barren mind the meekness that is receptive to the words. Then you humbly confessed before God that God tempts no one, but that everyone is tempted when he is beguiled and drawn by his own cravings,43 just as you were tempted by proud, presumptuous, and defiant thoughts. Then you were horrified by your aberration, that the idea that God tempts a person is supposed to explain life, because then to you life would have become a dark saying, then you would have listened to this explanation that, as you would have to admit, simply made everything inexplicable. Then, humbled and shamed, you confessed that it was good that God did not allow himself to be tempted, that he was the almighty God who can crush every arrogant thought, that in your despair you had not found an explanation of life’s dark saying that no one could maintain.
Every good and every perfect gift is from above and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no change or shadow of variation. These words are so comprehensible, so simple, and yet how many were they who really understood them, really understood that they were a commemorative coin more magnificent [III 44] than all the world’s treasure, but also a small coin that is usable in the daily affairs of life.
“Every good and every perfect gift is from God.” The apostle uses two phrases. “Every good gift,” he says, and thereby signifies the inner nature of the gift, that it is sound and blessed fruit with no concealed unwholesome or harmful additive. “Every perfect gift,” says the apostle, and thereby signifies the more intimate relation into which, by the help of God, the good gift enters with the individual who receives it, so that the good in and by itself does not become harmful and ruinous to him. Two other phrases correspond to these. “The gift is from above and comes down from the Father of lights.” “It is from above,” says the apostle, and thereby turns the believer’s thoughts up toward heaven, where every good has its home, the blessing that satisfies the mouth and the blessing that satisfies the heart; up toward heaven, from which the good spirits come to rescue people;44 up toward heaven, from which good intentions return as divine gifts. “From the Father of lights,” says the apostle, and thereby signifies that God penetrates everything with his eternal clarity, that he understands people’s thoughts from afar45 and is very familiar with all their paths, that his eternal love hurries ahead and prepares everything46 and in this way makes “the good gift” into a “perfect gift.” God in heaven is not like a person who, if he had a good gift to give, yet gave it away in the dark, with uncertainty—glad, of course, that it was a good gift and he a cheerful giver,47 but also sad because he did not really know whether it would really be of benefit to the other.
“Every good and every perfect gift,” says the apostle. “Every”—what does that mean? Does the apostle mean thereby that the firmament of heaven is a vast storeroom and that nevertheless all that heaven contains is good gifts? Does he mean that God takes from this rich store and now and then, according to the time and the occasion, sends now to this one, now to that one, to one more, to the other less, to one nothing at all, but what he sends is good and perfect? Let us look at the next words: “with whom there is no change or shadow of variation.” If that is what the apostle had wanted to convey, he presumably would have replaced these words with “from the God of love, the God of compassion and comfort, the giver of good gifts,” or however else he would have expressed it, better and more pithily than we are able to do it. He presumably [III 45] would have exhorted the believers especially to gratitude according to the time and the occasion, in proportion to the good gifts apportioned to them. This he does not do. What he admonishes against is the aberration of thinking that God would tempt a person, the aberration of thinking that God would let himself be tempted. What he drives home is that God is the constant who remains the same, whereas everything else changes. What he exhorts us to is to love God in such a way that our nature might become like his, that we might gain God in constancy and rescue our soul in patience.48 He says nothing in these words about the character of the specific gifts, but he speaks of the eternal relation of God to the believer. When joy transfigures life and everything is bright and clear, he warns against this transfiguration and advises that it be referred to the Father of lights, with whom there is no shadow of variation. When sorrow throws its shadow over our lives, when discouragement fogs our eyes, when the cloud of concern takes him away from our eyes,49 then comes the apostle’s admonition that with God there is no shadow of variation. What the apostle warns against is intrusion upon the blessed nature of God through the agitation of temptation, as if his heart had become either cold or weak. What he drives home is that just as God’s almighty hand made everything good,50 so he, the Father of lights, ever constant, at every moment makes everything good, makes everything a good and perfect gift for everyone who has enough heart to be humble, enough heart to be trustful.
But doubt is sly and guileful, not at all loudmouthed and defiant, as it is sometimes proclaimed to be; it is unassuming and crafty, not brash and presumptuous, and the more unassuming it is, the more dangerous it is. It does not deny that these words are beautiful, that they are comforting; if it did that, the heart would rebel against it; it merely says that the words are difficult, almost enigmatic. It wants to help the troubled mind to understand the apostolic saying that every good and every perfect gift is from God. “What does this mean? What else but that everything that comes from God is a good and a perfect gift, and that everything that is a good and a perfect gift is from God.” This explanation certainly is simple and natural, and yet doubt has craftily concealed itself in it. Consequently, it goes on: “Therefore, if a person is to be able to find peace in these words in his lifetime, he must be able to decide either what it is that comes from God or what may legitimately and truly be termed a good and a perfect gift. [III 46] But how is this possible? Is every human life, then, a continuous chain of miracles? Or is it possible for a human being’s understanding to make its way through the incalculable series of secondary causes and effects, to penetrate everything in between, and in that way to find God? Or is it possible for a human being’s understanding to decide with certainty what is a good and a perfect gift for him? Does it not run aground on this again and again? How often has humankind, how often has every single person, had the painful experience that wanting to venture something that was denied to one is a folly that does not go unpunished?” With that, doubt was all through with its explanation of the words—and also all through with the words. It had changed the apostolic, authoritative saying into empty talk that passed without pith and meaning from mouth to mouth. It was sufficiently humble not to insist that the words should be blotted out and consigned to eternal forgetfulness; it wrested them from the heart and handed them over to the lips.
Was this the way it was, my listener? Are these words perhaps not to be attributed to an apostle of the Lord? Are they perhaps to be attributed to that subheavenly spiritual host?51 Did a curse rest upon them so that they would be homeless in the world and find no abode in a human heart; was it their destiny to confuse people? Is it not possible to halt that alarming movement in which thinking exhausts itself and yet goes no further? Was it perhaps nevertheless true that God does tempt a person, even if in no other way than by proclaiming a word that only confuses his thinking?
The Apostle Paul says, “Everything created by God is good if it is received with thankfulness.”52 It is mainly to admonish against an earthly shrewdness that would enslave believers in ceremonies that the apostle says these words. Yet what does the apostle do? He raises the believer’s mind above earthly and finite cares, above worldly shrewdness and doubt, by means of a devout observation that we always ought to thank God, since the thankfulness53 of which the apostle speaks cannot be a thankfulness that one person ought to show another, and those false teachers also believed that by contravening the ceremony the believer sinned against God. Should not the same [III 47] hold for every person’s relation to God, that every gift is a good and a perfect gift when it is received with thankfulness?
Is it not true, my listener, that you interpreted those apostolic words in this way and that you were not baffled about what was a good and a perfect gift or about what came from God, because every gift, you said, is good if it is received with thankfulness from the hand of God, and from God comes every good and every perfect gift. You did not anxiously question what it is that comes from God; you happily and boldly said: This, for which I thank God. You did not trouble your mind with deliberating over what was a good and a perfect gift, because you confidently said: I know that this for which I am thanking God is that, and therefore I thank him for it. You interpreted the apostolic words in the expanding of your heart. You did not insist on learning much from life; you wished to learn but one thing: always to thank God, and thereby to learn to understand one thing: that all things serve for good those who love God.54
Are, then, the apostolic words that every good and every perfect gift is from above and comes down from the Father of lights a dark and difficult saying? And if you think that you cannot understand it, do you dare to maintain that you have wanted to understand it? When you had doubts about what came from God or about what was a good and a perfect gift, did you risk the venture? And when the light sparkle of joy beckoned you, did you thank God for it? And when you were so strong that you felt you needed no help, did you then thank God? And when your allotted portion was little [liden], did you thank God? And when your allotted portion was sufferings [Lidelser], did you thank God? And when your wish was denied, did you thank God? And when you yourself had to deny your wish, did you thank God? And when people wronged you and insulted you, did you thank God? We are not saying that their wrong thereby ceased to be wrong—what would be the use of such pernicious and foolish talk! It is up to you to decide whether it was wrong; but have you taken the wrong and insult to God and by your thanksgiving received it from his hand as a good and a perfect gift? Did you do that? Well, then you have worthily interpreted [III 48] the apostolic words to the honor of God and to your own salvation. It is beautiful that a person prays, and many a promise is given to the one who prays without ceasing,55 but it is more blessed always to give thanks. Then you have worthily interpreted those apostolic words more gloriously than if all the angels spoke in flaming tongues.56
But who had courage like that, a faith like that; who loved God in such a way? Who was the joyous and staunchly devout warrior who stood at his post in life so perseveringly that he never dozed off? And if you did that, my listener, did you not conceal it from yourself? Did you say to yourself, “I do understand the apostolic words, all right, but I also understand that I am too cowardly, or too proud, or too lazy to want to understand them properly”? Did you admonish yourself? Even if this seems to be a hard saying, did you consider that also the timid person has a faithless heart and is no honest lover? Did you bear in mind that there is a judgment also upon the disheartened, but the humble heart does not come to judgment? Did you bear in mind that also the mournful person does not love God with his whole heart, but the person who is joyous in God has overcome the world? Did you at least keep watch over yourself? Did you keep the apostolic words holy? Did you treasure them in a pure and beautiful heart57 and refuse to be ransomed, for any price or any wily bribe on the part of prudence, from the deep pain of having to confess again and again that you never loved as you were loved?58 That you were faithless when God was faithful;59 that you were lukewarm when he was ardent; that he sent good gifts that you perverted to your own detriment; that he inquired about you but you would not answer; that he called to you but you would not listen; that he spoke cordially to you but you ignored it; that he spoke earnestly to you but you misunderstood it; that he fulfilled your wish and for thanks you brought new wishes; that he fulfilled your wish but you had made the wrong wish and were quick to anger? Have you really felt how sad it is that you need so many words to describe your relation to God? Have you in this way at least been honest toward yourself and toward your God in your relation to him? Have you not postponed the accounting; have you not preferred to be ashamed of yourself in your solitude? Have you been prompt in enduring the pain of the accounting; have you borne in mind that he loved you first?60 Have you been quick to judge for yourself that he should not continue to love you while you were slow to love in return? If you have done this, then probably you will now and then win the courage to give thanks even when what happens is strange in your eyes, [III 49] the courage to understand that every good and every perfect gift is from above, the courage to explain it in love, the faith to receive this courage, since it, too, is a good and a perfect gift.
Every good and every perfect gift is from above and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no change or shadow of variation. These words are so curative, so healing, and yet how often has the penitent soul really known how to let itself be healed by them; how often has it understood their judging earnestness—but also their compassionate grace.
Or perhaps there was no occasion in your life, my listener, to find these words difficult? Were you always satisfied with yourself, so satisfied that you perhaps thanked God that you were not like other people?61 Had you perhaps grown so clever that you grasped the profound meaning in the meaningless saying that it is glorious not to be like other people? . . . . . What was it, then, that made them difficult for you? If a person were himself a good and a perfect gift, if he simply kept himself receptive and accepted everything from God’s hands, how, indeed, could he ever be able to receive anything but good and perfect gifts? But when you submitted to the common lot of humankind, you of course admitted that you were neither good nor perfect, that you not only kept yourself receptive, but that a change occurred in everything you received. Can the like, then, be understood by anything but the like; can the good remain good in anything but the good; can wholesome nourishment preserve its wholesomeness in a sick soul? A person is not in an exclusively receptive relation; he is himself communicating, and it became difficult for you to understand how the unwholesomeness that came from you could be anything but harmful to others. Surely you understood that it was only through thankfulness to God that everything became a good and a perfect gift for you; you maintained that the other person was also bound to appropriate everything in the same way; but even the love that gave birth to the thankfulness, was it pure, did it not change that which was received?
Can a person, then, do any more than love? Have thought and language any higher expression for loving than always to give thanks? Not at all, it has a lower, a humbler expression. Even the person who is always willing to give thanks nevertheless loves according to his own perfection, and a person can truly love God only when he loves him according to his own imperfection. Which love is this? It is the love that is born of repentance, which is more beautiful than any other love, for [III 50] in it you love God. It is more faithful and more fervent than all other love, for in repentance it is God who loves you. In repentance, you receive everything from God, even the thanksgiving that you bring to him, so that even this is what the child’s gift is to the eyes of the parents, a jest,62 a receiving of something that one has oneself given. Was it not so, my listener? You wanted to give thanks to God at all times, but even this was very imperfect. Then you understood that God is the one who does everything in you and who then grants you the childlike joy of regarding your thanksgiving as a gift from you. This joy he gives you when you have not feared the pain of repentance and the deep grief in which a person becomes as happy as a child in God, when you have not feared to understand that this is love, not that we love God but that God loves us.63
And you, my listener, you who in a simpler and humbler way understood the profound meaning of the thought that you were not like other people, was it so easy not to misinterpret the apostolic words? You fully comprehended that every good and every perfect gift comes from God, but, alas, you could not comprehend that in you it could become anything but something harmful? The dew and the rain are certainly a good gift from above, but if the noxious plant understood itself and could speak, it would perhaps say, “Stop! Go back to heaven again so that I may perish of drought; do not refresh my root lest I thrive and grow and become even more noxious!” And you did not understand yourself, did not understand the apostolic words, since in that case it would not be true that every perfect gift comes from God, because then God would not be greater than a person’s anxious heart,64 and how then could every good and every perfect gift come from him?
Perhaps there was something in your life that you wished undone; if this were possible, then you would take every perfect gift from God’s hand with joyful thanksgiving. Your joy at the mere thought of it was so great that it seemed as if it would tempt God to undo what had been done. But God is tempted by no one. Perhaps you tried to forget it so that your thanksgiving would not be feeble and like a smoking wick.65 Ah, but if you could forget it, how then would it be possible for you to understand the apostolic words? If it were possible for you to forget it, then every good and every perfect gift would indeed not come from God; you would have shut yourself out from the blessing not by what you had done but by your poor and selfish and arbitrary understanding of the [III 51] words, just as the person whose wish was denied would shut himself out from the blessing by wanting to think that the wish denied was not also a good and a perfect gift, even though it was harder for you to dare to understand it than for him.
Perhaps you understood the apostolic words in another way, thought that punishment from God is also a good and a perfect gift. The wrath within you wanted, as it were, to come to the aid of divine wrath so that the punishment might consume you, and yet the punishment you suffered was different from what you had supposed it would be. Perhaps it involved more than you, and yet you were the guilty one; perhaps its scope was rather extensive, and yet you were the only one who should be its object. Even if you secretly acknowledged that divine Governance knows how to strike a person, knows how to make itself understandable to him, even if no one else understood this, the apostolic words remained obscure to you, and it seemed as if the punishment itself became a new temptation. What was punishment and what was incident became ambiguous to you; if it was only incident, then your soul demanded punishment; if the whole thing was punishment, then you could not make it your own. You were willing to renounce everything, every wish, every desire; you were willing to give up any idea that the best you had done in your soul’s utmost exertion, in the assurance that it was good, was anything but foolishness and sin; you were willing to suffer any punishment—but this more that was attached to it, this you could not bear—was this, too, a good and a perfect gift? Then your soul grew dark; you could not understand the words? But what did you do then? Did you reject the words? Oh no! You held fast to them in all your distress. And when all the devils stood ready to rescue your soul from the insanity of despair by the explanation that God is not love, is it not true that you then clung fast to the words even though you did not understand them, because you still had a faint hope in them and to let them go was far more terrible than anything else?
Did you do this, my listener? Then, even though the outer being was damaged, the inner being was nevertheless renewed.66 Then you understood that every good and every perfect gift is from above if it is received with thankfulness; you understood that repentance is a thanksgiving not only for punishment but also for the divine decree, and that the person who in his repentance only wants to suffer punishment will not in the deepest sense love according to his own [III 52] imperfection. Just as the Lord himself says: This very day,67 so the Lord’s apostle says: This very day every good and every perfect gift is from above and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no change or shadow of variation, this very day, and this although he today is the same as he was yesterday.
Every good and every perfect gift is from above and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no change or shadow of variation. These words are so beautiful, so appealing, so moving, they are so soothing and comforting, so simple and intelligible, so curative and healing. This is why we beseech you, O God, that you would make the ears of those who hitherto have not heeded them willing to receive them, that through an understanding of the words you would heal the misunderstanding heart so that it understands the words, that you would turn the straying thought toward a saving obedience under the words, that you would give the penitent soul the bold confidence68 to dare to understand the words, and that you would make those who have understood them more and more blessed by their understanding them again and again. Amen.