2
2
Many things can weave veils between us and our dear Lord. “I feared a fear and it came upon me,” came upon me like a mist, came between me and my light. The way to tear that veil to shreds is to do what Gideon did when he took the word of his God quite simply, and gave a peaceful name to the place of his fear: Gideon said, “Alas, O Lord God!” And the Lord said unto him, “Peace be unto thee; fear not, thou shalt not die.” Then Gideon built an altar there unto the Lord, and called it Jehovah-Shalom, The Lord is peace. The place of my fear becomes the place of my peace. I am out of rest when I fear. Return unto thy rest, O my soul; for the Lord hath dealt bountifully with thee.
Theories about disaster or trial, the varying judgments of people and their conclusions—each separate thread of talk can contribute a thread towards the weaving of a veil. Texts used without reference to context can darken the very sun.
To take the words about chastening in Hebrews 12 to ourselves is one thing; to give them as a matter of course to another is, I think, different. For what if that other be an Epaphroditus?{15} He could have avoided this that has come to him by caring a little more for himself, a little less for his Lord; a careful, cool, calculating love never leads to the place where Epaphroditus is so often found.
When we are paralyzed by our soul’s surrenderings, and our hands hang down and our knees are feeble, and the paths that we make for our feet are crooked, and the lame are turned out of the way, then the Shining One of the Pilgrim’s story comes with a whip of small cord in his hand. “And as he chastised them, he said, As many as I love I rebuke and chasten; be zealous therefore and repent.” And this chastening was not meant to be “joyous, but grievous.” But the Shining One did not go on scourging the pilgrims indefinitely. “This done, he bids them go on their way, so they thanked him for all his kindness, and went softly along the right way singing.” It is a perfect illustration of Hebrews 12.
But there are other pilgrims, the little and the innocent, who for no turning aside of their own have a suffering childhood; there are those too, and they are many, for whom the book of Job and certain psalms and large portions of the New Testament were written.
And there is Epaphroditus—a name dear to God, for the Lord loveth a hilarious giver, and the happy word expresses that happy soul. We have all known Epaphroditus. We have seen him “playing as it were, the gambler with his life.” We have seen him pay for that glad hour through long, slow months—perhaps years; for he is a soldier, and his Captain never promised him immunity from the hazards of battle. (Would such a promise have attracted him?) But the fighting man of old days, shot by the archers because he was near to his Captain, at whom those archers perpetually did shoot, was not accustomed to make much of his wound. Right glad was he that he was near enough to his Captain to stop an arrow on its way to him. And Epaphroditus does not think much of the ills that come because, not regarding his life, he was allowed to supply some lack of service to his dear Lord. He sees them rather as gifts: “Unto you it is given in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe on Him, but also to suffer for His sake.”
A word like this, to you it is given, takes the ache from battle wounds. It leaves Epaphroditus humbly happy instead of half bewildered, half broken-hearted by the thought that somehow, somewhere he must be grieving his Lord and so compelling Him to continue to “scourge” him. It quiets his heart, it opens his ear to other words: “Count it all joy, beloved, think it not strange. To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden manna, and will give him a white stone, and in the stone a new name written, which no man knoweth, saving he that receiveth it.” But what these words mean it has not entered into the heart of Epaphroditus to imagine, even in a dream.