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5
The bountiful supply of all our needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus is one of the things that are of good report—things that are sweet to speak of, as the word has been translated. Many a servant of the Master occupied in His business has seen tables spread in the wilderness and has told of his tables to the praise of the mercy of God. But if there be no miracles of ravens and brooks, meal in a barrel, oil in a cruse? Then he is called into a new fellowship: “Even unto this present hour we both hunger, and thirst, and are naked, and are buffeted, and have no certain dwelling-place; and labor, working with our own hands; being reviled, we bless; being persecuted, we suffer it; being defamed, we entreat: we are made as the filth of the world, and are the offscouring of all things unto this day.”
When this happens we may miss an opportunity, which perhaps angels covet, to speak good of His name. If we pity ourselves we shall be far from Him who refused the soft “pity thyself” of human affection. If we accept the kind of sympathy which says in effect about anything He allows to be, “This is hard,” we shall be like the servant who so little knew his master that he could say to him, “I knew thee that thou art an hard man.” In our hearts we know that all is well: we have a treasure in the heavens that faileth not, where no thief approacheth, neither moth corrupteth; but others cannot see our hearts. If Christians are the only Bible that the world reads, what manner of persons ought they to be? “I said, I will keep my mouth with a bridle.”
But it is not enough to be silent and to hold my peace even from good because of those who observe me and do not understand the doings of my Lord. I must go further than that. So, as with heavenly intent, next to the psalm of the bridle or muzzle is the psalm of the New Song, even praise unto our God; many shall see it and fear (for the songs of the Lord are not only heard with the ear but seen by the eyes) and shall trust in the Lord.
Before a song can be put in the mouth it must be “learned by heart.” There are times when the music of heaven appears to overflow to the earth, and we understand the words written about the worship in the Friends’ Meeting House, when the silence was not dead but vital:
Oh then call not silent,
Hours so full of singing.
Even now, from wall to wall,
Hear the echoes ringing.
There are times when we hear nothing. And yet if we are quiet we shall presently hear. And having heard we shall sing. And it may be that when we look back from the Celestial Country, where there are no walls but the jeweled walls of the City whose gates shall not be shut at all, we shall know that the songs that echo longest are those we first heard and then learned to sing in the days when we seemed walled in, and then found our window.