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Human distress of any kind can build walls. So can circumstances which, however they may appear to others, are painful to the one concerned. The wall may be like this ivied wall, or it may be as bare as a slab of cement. Beauty or bareness makes no difference. If we see no door anywhere, or if the doors be all barred and bolted even though the fair wide heaven be above, the place within that wall is prison to us—until we see our window.
And when we see it we are free; for in the spiritual world to see out is to be out. We are where our thoughts are, just as we are where our love is. “For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”
Bewilderment can wall us in: “I have seen the wicked in great power and spreading himself like a green bay tree.” We see such men flourish: they are not in trouble as other men; neither are they plagued like other men. This, as we all know, is continually and literally true. The tabernacles of robbers prosper, and they that provoke God are secure. “They hatch cockatrice’ eggs, and weave the spider’s web: he that eateth of their eggs dieth, and that which is crushed breaketh out into a viper.” We have seen the innocent stung by the vipers that crawl out of those eggs: “Then was my heart grieved.” And a grieved heart is walled.
But there is a swift way of escape: “When I thought to know this”—the mystery of apparently triumphant iniquity—“it was too painful for me; until I went into the sanctuary of God.” And after a little while spent in that quiet place we find our peace in prayer: “O let the wickedness of the ungodly come to an end. Fill their faces with shame, that they may seek Thy name, O Lord. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”
Sometimes we pile up the stones ourselves. We take some promise in our Book, isolate it, forget other scriptures that may bear upon it; interpret it, perhaps unconsciously, according to our own desire, and then stake our all upon it. “Call upon Me in the day of trouble: I will deliver thee and thou shalt glorify Me.” I will deliver thee from the day of trouble? Thank God, it may be so. A spiritual airplane may swoop down and carry the assaulted one far out of reach of his foe. But sometimes he sees no wings in the sky; only the Shepherd draws very near, and a soft little song fills the valley: “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for Thou art with me; Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me.”
To see an alternative meaning in a promise may open a window, and to see such a window open after a shadowy day is like seeing a moonflower open in the dusk. All day long it has kept its bud folded close, a long, twisted, pointed tube. But now it slowly unfurls till it is a wide-open bell. And deep within it always lies a little coronet of diamonds, a dew of light.