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A profound and recurrent weariness of spirit because of the repeated, though perhaps smaller, trials that beset us may become a second dark wood.
One day I was preparing a microscope slide for a class of children, to whom I was giving simple lessons in biology, when I saw something I had never seen before.
The oil emulsion and that tricky detail, the light, had been happily adjusted, so that the film of water under the high-power lens had the velvety darkness of the midnight sky, when suddenly I found myself looking at a skyful of stars. And all the stars were moving, but moving in a curious way. Not one went straight forward, nor did any move in circles, or in any ordered fashion. It was as though unseen forces were perpetually beating upon the illuminated particles and pushing them about. The whole field of vision appeared to be nothing but a sparkling confusion. Later I learned that I had stumbled unawares upon that phenomenon known as the Brownian movement. The stars were truly being beaten upon, first on one side, then on the other, by those invisible forces, the molecules in the water, and so each particle was caused to move in an irregular zigzag. That explained what I had seen, so far as it can be explained.
There are times when we seem to be caught in a kind of spiritual Brownian movement and are pushed about almost past endurance by multitudinous molecules. Trouble seems to be everywhere; we are so buffeted that we hardly know how to hope for anything so simple and direct as a straight course across the field of life, or any ordered movement, or peaceful fulfillment of purpose. We feel like the stars at the mercy of the molecules, and more than a little confused and overborne.
And yet for the children of the Father, whatever is must be among the all things that work together for good. And, so the wise tell us, if it were not for molecules we would have no blue skies.
But our greatest trouble may be that we are tired of wrestling with tireless powers, tired of the cumbrance and the burden and the strife, and long for something different. In the heat of the work and warfare we have said within ourselves, “Oh, for a day without distresses about souls, a day without anxieties!” We have almost reached the place where Moses was when he said in effect, “Am I responsible for the existence of these children that Thou shouldest say unto me, Carry them in thy bosom?” And yet we could not help doing that very thing because they were dear unto us.
And then we have been ashamed, for we remembered the Good Shepherd, who endured the contradiction of sinners to the end, who was never tired of loving, who laid down His life for the sheep. And we have known ourselves unworthy to be called His undershepherds. There is nothing so grievous to the man or woman whose supreme life-purpose is shepherd work as the discovery of loss of shepherd love. To seem to be what one is not—that is the last word in distress. It may be that a sudden shock of disappointment in one dearly loved, perhaps a cold ingratitude, has drained the heart dry. Not that we ask for gratitude, but that a lack of response is a chilling thing. After years of love, of breaking toil, to be met by this can pull down the soul to the dust.
Deep unto deep, O Lord,
Crieth in me;
Gathering strength I come,
Lord, unto Thee.
Jesus of Calvary,
Smitten for me,
Ask what Thou wilt, but give
Love to me.
That is our prayer then. Yes, let strength go, health, vigor, the keen edge of our blade which once gone can never return, let anything go, if only love be left.
There is a place where love can be renewed. “Now there was leaning on Jesus’ bosom one of His disciples whom Jesus loved...there stood by the cross of Jesus the disciple whom He loved. Jesus saith, I thirst.”
But more than pains that racked Him then
Was the deep longing thirst divine
That thirsted for the souls of men:
Dear Lord, and one was mine.
It was the disciple who leaned upon His breast and stood beside His cross who heard that word, “I thirst.” Is it not always so? O Lord of Calvary, hold us so close to Thee that we shall be drawn into that fellowship, that thirst.
This prayer goes very deep. It is not a light thing to ask to share in the fellowship of His sufferings, which is the fellowship of His love and of His thirst. “He that is not ready to suffer all things and to stand at the will of his Beloved is not worthy to be called a lover.” We know we are not worthy. Such a life is like that knowledge which “is too high for me. I cannot attain unto it.” We cannot attain; but when the Most High stoops to us who are low and fills us with the power of His life, then nothing is impossible. It is not that we attain. It is that He in us does that which we could never do.
We find this comforting truth in the parable of the Vine: Abide in Me and I in you. We have it in that figure of the true, the burning bush: “And the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush: and he looked, and, behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed.” The angel of the Lord did not choose the tall date palm of the Arabian oasis, which would have burned for hours like a glorious fiery torch. He chose the common low thorn of the desert which, set alight, burns up in a few minutes. There is nothing left of it then but a heap of ashes, soon to be blown away by the wind. It was this insignificance that He chose. God loves the “things that are not.” We cannot be less than that. We cannot be less than an empty cockle shell lying on the beach. But the sea can flow over that shell and fill it full. It can be filled with all the fullness of the sea.