God Often Prepares us for Coming Trial
God Often Prepares us for Coming Trial
By Giving us some New and Blissful Revelation of Himself
I notice that, at the close of the preceding chapter, we are told that "Abraham called on the name of the everlasting God." Now, we do not learn that he had ever looked on God in this light before. He had known Him as God, the Almighty (17:1), but not as God, the Everlasting. The unchangeableness, the eternity, the independence of change, and time, and tens, which mark the Being of Jehovah—all these broke suddenly on his soul about that time in a fresh and more vivid manner. Who that can remember seeing the sea for the first time can ever forget the first impression of its grandeur and far-spread mirror-like expanse? And the soul of the patriarch was thrilled with the lofty train of high and holy thought, as he used that name in prayer beside the well, and beneath the spreading shade of the tree he had planted. And with him, as so often with us, the new name was to enable him the better to withstand the shock of coming sorrow.