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I will remember Thee from the place where I am. Perhaps that place is a quiet room near another room where the surgeons are busy about their work. You have things to do, furniture to arrange, a bed to prepare for the one who will soon be carried in, but though you try to be absorbed in these matters you are far more in that other room, all but seeing what is going on there, all but hearing the quick words asking for this or that, and the clink of the instruments. How loudly the clock ticks, how slowly the minutes crawl. “He shall not be afraid of evil tidings; his heart is fixed, trusting in the Lord”: though evil tidings come, the fixed and trusting heart shall not be afraid. But you are afraid; so, is it that you do not trust? is your heart not fixed? Do not stay to answer; there is a quicker way of help than that: “O my God, my soul is cast down within me: therefore will I remember Thee.” Here where deep calleth unto deep, and the noise of the waterspouts, those cataracts of trouble, deafens me, here just where I am, from the land of fear, the land of suspense, will I remember Thee. And instantly the Lord commands His lovingkindness.
Or your land of fear is different. It is the land where such words as these are vital: In God have I put my trust; I will not be afraid; what can man do unto me? and yet you are afraid. And the minutes that crept so slowly outside the operation-room are like running feet now. They are hurrying you to that same room. What can man do unto you? Much every way. Like a small thing unsheltered, like mimosa in a thunderstorm—stems, leaves, flowers, involved in a common distress—that is how you feel till you remember your God.
And then what happens? Who can tell? Who ever saw the passing of the spirit of heaviness? the putting on of the garment of praise? Only you know that the one has passed, and the other has been put on. And you prove that the spirit of man energized by the Spirit of God can defy the natural, and need not be, as it would naturally be, destroyed when it is cast down. Its word is always, Cast down but not destroyed: I will not fear what flesh can do unto me—even my own flesh. For no Christian man or woman was ever meant to walk on the natural plane. There is no provision made for such a walk. Always the expectation of God is that His child shall break through and live and endure as seeing the Invisible, and there is full provision made for him to do this: “My grace is sufficient for thee.”
And now you are compassed about with songs. As one in a garden or in the greenwood at sunrise hears on all sides little snatches of song, a cadence or two, and sometimes long-sustained music of lovely liquid notes, so it is with you. Scriptures of comfort sing all around you now, and without effort on your part, words that make music are poured upon the inward ear.
And when the strife is fierce, the warfare long,
Steals on the ear the distant triumph song,
And hearts are brave again, and arms are strong.
Alleluia.
But that is another kind of music. The singers are as little seen as the birds among the green leaves of the trees. And yet, like the birds, they are our dear companions. They are the heavenly people of the cloud of witnesses who compass us about.
For so the Lord commandeth His lovingkindness. Beneath, above, behind, before, that lovingkindness flows like broad rivers and streams. Where is fear then? Where is distress? The glorious Lord is unto us a place of broad rivers and streams wherein shall go no galley with oars, neither shall gallant ship pass thereby. The ships of the enemy cannot sail those waters. It is a thing forbidden. Fear thou not therefore, thou who art facing some inescapable trial of the flesh. The Lord thy God will bear thee as a nursling.{1} The Lord is thy shepherd, thou shalt not want. He shall gather the lambs with His arms and carry them in His bosom. We are all His lambs when we are ill.
The days or hours before the postman comes when a painful letter is expected, the moment between receiving a telegram and tearing it open, who does not know that land? It is a burning land. Therefore will I remember Thee—and the glowing sand becomes a pool, and we are quiet from fear of evil. There is also a sad-colored land which is not so full of fiery pangs as of one long ache. There is no suspense now. All is known. There is only a dull walk through a depressing valley and up into a mist. Therefore will I remember Thee, and Light and Truth are sent forth as guides, and Goodness and Mercy follow.
“It is a very dark valley,” said a girl as she looked at the photograph. Only the evening before she had heard that her feet must walk down those slopes and into the valley. An hour afterwards she was heard singing to herself:
Far hast Thou passed my prayer,
Good hast Thou been to me;
Thy lover everywhere,
Blessed Will, cause me to be.
And we who loved her knew that she had looked beyond the valley to the light upon the hills. And we knew that even the valley would be light about her.