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19—MUST
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HERE is an under-passion in life—in a life, at least, that confronts leagued fiends.
God, fight we not within a cursed world,
Whose very air teems thick with leagued fiends—
Be earnest, earnest, earnest,
but to the outward eye our days are made of a stream of minutes spent in doing common duties, spent in suffering too with those who suffer.
“I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!...Are ye able to drink of the cup that I shall drink of, and to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with? They said unto Him, We are able. And He saith unto them, Ye shall drink indeed of My cup and be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with....The Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many.” It is in the fellowship of this ministry that the cup must be drunk and the baptism accepted. A great Must dominated the life of the Son of Man. That Must will dominate ours if we follow in His footsteps. “No one of you who does not detach himself from all that belongs to him can be a disciple of Mine,” said the Master.{16}
We shall feel sometimes like this battered pine, thrashed by the wind. “Each snarling blast shot through me.” That tree is like a soul hard beset and alone so far as human companionship is concerned. “Every strong conviction ends by taking possession of us; it overcomes and absorbs us, and tears us ruthlessly from everything else; it becomes our sole object, and outside it nothing seems to touch us; those who do not understand it are strangers to us; those who attack it are our enemies; those who love and serve it with us are our true, our only family.”
That true, that only family is the dear possession of those who count all well lost for the sake of the one supreme purpose which dominates life. To be one of such a family means not living upon the joy of fellowship: there must always be inward detachment, for companionship in the flesh is not promised. Many a thought of God has been hindered (to use the speech of earth) because two friends refused to separate. But even though it may not be a question of vocation, a loyal allegiance holds the heart of the Lord’s lover. If his nearest are not one in that allegiance, there will be times when he is very lonely, for there is no loneliness so acute as loneliness in a crowd.
Sometimes the weaning of the child (the training that teaches it to do without) is like a cold sharp wind. We needed a prop at first, and we were given one. We leaned; we loved to lean. And then it was taken away:
Gently loosens He thy hold
Of the treasured former things,
Loves and joys that were of old,
Shapes to which the spirit clings.
The words were written in days when a man who loved his Lord enough to obey Him was persecuted as a fanatic. It may be those days are coming again. Perhaps they have come. Certain it is that the reason there is so much shallow living—much talk, but little obedience—is that so few are prepared to be, like the pine on the hilltop, alone in the wind for God.
For life is not a gay affair like the skimming of a yacht on summer seas. If we are in earnest to set our hearts on the greatest things—likeness to our Lord, abandonment to His service with no ends of our own—we shall not find it so. “Beware what you set your heart upon, for it surely shall be yours”; beware of the insincere in prayer. “The Lord remember all thy offerings and turn to ashes thy burnt sacrifice” (Psalm 20:3. See the Geneva Bible.). A sacrifice accepted is a sacrifice consumed.
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There was a pause in the temple worship after that prayer was offered. We often hasten on to the next petition, “Grant thee according to thine own heart, and fulfill all thy counsel” (vs. 4). But the soul cannot be hurried. There must be a Selah. In that pause we see the divine “must” of suffering. “I will show him what great things he must suffer for My sake”—not what great things he must do, achieve, enjoy.
There may be a long interval between the two clauses, “Ask and ye shall receive...that your joy may be full.” But the end of true prayer is always joy. The sorrow is turned into joy. This is more than to have a cup emptied of sorrow and filled with joy. The sorrow itself is transformed even as the earthly garments that our Saviour wore became shining and white as the light when He was transfigured on the mountain.
Our joy shall be full when we see what Eternal Wisdom wrought for us through the difficult days of time. And throughout those days the soul that refuses to be offended is marvelously comforted. The Father draws His shattered child very close to His heart. The secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him and He will show them His covenant, that covenant of peace that shall never be removed.
For the turning to ashes is only one side of the truth. The other is shown in that beautiful figure of the true—Aaron’s rod, that budded, and brought forth buds, and bloomed blossoms, and yielded almonds. Perhaps the reason that we know so little of the deeper things of prayer is that we know so little of the Selah between those two verses of the twentieth psalm.
This book may fall into the hands of one to whom the “must” of a divine constraint is no dream of imagination but a tremendous fact. To his “Friends will miss me, they say,” his Lord has answered, “Choose ye tonight if I am to miss you or they.” He cannot argue with those who do not understand, he cannot explain, only he knows that he must obey. “How am I straitened till it be accomplished”—it is like that. No other way is possible for him. He has passed the place where the road forks. He cannot go back on his call. He cannot resist the constraint.
Then in God’s name, I say, Let him yield to it: let him go on. The storm will beat upon him. He must be prepared for that. “Woe unto you when all men speak well of you”—he may have to learn the meaning of that uncoveted word. “Blessed are ye poor”—he may have to taste of that blessedness; not many desire it. He may have to stand alone on his hilltop like that stone pine. “The soul would endure splendid martyrdoms, but her Lord lays upon her the ultimate reward of failure and of death”—the ultimate reward? Yes and no. Beyond the Seen is the Unseen. That is the ultimate reward.
For always that which gives imperishable gold to a life (as to a book) is not the trend of the opinions which direct its course, not its success—never its success; it is the steadfastness and the integrity of its spirit, the love which inspires it, the note of the eternal which dominates it.