Chapter 10: The Overflowing Cup
Chapter 10: The Overflowing Cup
Psalm 23:5 My cup runneth over.
GLAD AND FESTAL moments come to the saddest and most weary hearts. At the close of a prolonged strain of anxiety, when lying exhausted on the desert sand, sleep casts its spell over the tired nature; angels spread the refreshing banquet; and the soul awakes beneath the celestial touch, invigorated for new toils.
We cannot always tell whence such experiences come; this is all we know: that the step is more elastic, the heart swells with buoyant hope, songs break from the lips, and the whole being thrills, as nature does on some lovely day of spring. "When the Lord turns again our captivity, the mouth is filled with laughter, and the tongue with singing: then we say among the heathen, The Lord hath done great things for us; whereof we are glad."
At such hours life seems to us like a chalice mixed by the loving hand of God, and overflowing with His mercy and loving-kindness. And with tears struggling with smiles for the mastery, as rain and sunbeams on an April day, we lift the brimming cup to our lips and cry, "My cup runneth over."
A similar experience is unfolded in another psalm, which, like so many of its character, touches the lowest depths and springs, as well as the topmost heights of human experience. It begins with the plaintive notes of trouble, "the sorrows of death, and the pains of hell," and with rash imputations upon the truth of all men. It tells how in his need the psalmist called upon the name of the Lord. It recounts the glorious deliverance there was wrought on his behalf. And now, as he reviews his lot, it seems like a cup full of salvation, charged with the prompt, gentle, and sufficient deliverance wrought for him by the Almighty (Psa 116:12-13).
We have nothing to say now about the texture of life's cups. They may be of gold or silver or tin or alabaster or glass. There is an infinite variety in the raw material of which our lives are made. We have to deal only with ingredients, which will taste as sweet from the earthen mug as from the golden goblet. And, after all, the great differences that come to men's lives are much more in their contents than in their outward seeming. Cease looking disconsolately on the outside of thy cup and platter, but look thankfully on the contents, which may be sweeter and richer for thee, albeit that they are held in a cup of common texture, than are the contents of other lives which thou dost envy, not knowing how bitter is the draught contained within.
It becomes us to remember that "the cup of blessing" of which we drink was once filled with a bitter curse. We read ill Scripture of the cup of trembling and of the cup of God's wrath; and as we read the words we know that our lives might well have been filled with trembling and with wrath, as the just reward of our deeds; not that God is vindictive, or that He rejoices in the death of the sinner; but that His holy nature cannot but be roused into antagonism whenever He comes into contact with evil and impurity. If we had been left to drink the bitter results of our sin, it would have been as when Moses ground the calf to powder and strewed it upon the waters, and made the people drink. And if it be asked how it is that we have escaped so bitter an experience, the answer is given in His words who has pleaded the cause of His people: "Behold, I have taken out of thine hand the cup of trembling, even the dregs of the cup of my fury; thou shalt no more drink it again." And when He took it out of our hands, He poured its contents into the cup mixed for Himself, returning it to us emptied even to the dregs; nay, better, filled with the wine of His love and life; while He drank our potion of wrath and woe.
Remember His own words in the garden, when His agony had passed and the ruffian band was about to bind Him, and Peter impetuously and characteristically drew his sword: "Then said Jesus unto Peter, Put up thy sword into the sheath: the cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it?"
Consider the ingredients of Christ's cup, the shame and spitting; the pain and anguish; the physical torture; and, above all, the bitterness of our sins, which were made to meet in Him; the guilt of our curse, which He voluntarily assumed; the equivalent of our punishment, which was imputed to Him. If we may so put it, the human race stood in one long line, each with a cup of hemlock in his hand; and Christ passed along, took from each his cup and poured its contents into the vast beaker which He carried; so that on the cross He "tasted death for every man." Thus our lives brim with salvation, because His brimmed with condemnation. Our cup is one of joy, because His cup was one of sorrow. Our cup is one of blessedness, because His was one of God-forsakenness.
Oh, that we might in our moments of gladness imitate the blessed in heaven, who, amid their greatest joys, ever associate their happiness with the death of Christ! Never forget the cost at which your brightest moments have been made possible.
Let Us Enumerate Some Of The Ingredients Of Our Life-Cup
1. Good health is one of the chief.
A man might have everything calculated to promote human happiness, but if all were tinged with the pain and weariness of constant illness, what joy could he have? Our sad days, when all surrounding objects are draped in sombre hues, are, as often as not, due to bodily weakness; and the ecstasy of our glad days, when sunny light lies upon the lawn of life, is generally coincident with a sense of Vigorous health. If, then, your life-cup seems sweet and refreshing to your taste, you may calculate pretty shrewdly that good health is a main ingredient; though we can form no estimate of its importance until it is withdrawn.
2. Then there are human friendships and affections,
The absence of which makes the greatest prosperity a dreary desert, so that even golden streets blister and weary the feet as if they were arid sands; but whose presence will gladden the meanest lot, so that even a garden of herbs will gleam with the glow of heaven.
3 There are also the comforts of home life, to say nothing of the necessaries.
What a rich admixture of these do most of us enjoy! Soft pillows, carpeted floors, warm, weather-tight rooms, likewise furniture rich and plentiful; and variety of food, sufficient and comely garments, attendants who save us from harder and rougher toil. The Stoic may discipline himself to do without many of these things, and may even try to convince us that life is easier without than with them; but, nevertheless, it is undeniable that much of the enjoyment of our daily lives arises from the presence of these amenities to which we have become habituated by long custom and use.
4. There are also the joys of the mind.
Each can draw up from the crypt of the past the treasure in which lies the learning of the' ancient and modern world; each can collect the thoughts of poets and philosophers flung upon the strand of time as driftwood on the beach, torn by storms from ocean depths; each can search out and drink in the wonders and beauties of nature from the wild-flowers of the forest glade.
"And those outlying worlds of many mooned spheres;
And that great store of stars more thickly strown in yonder sky
Than dust upon the pale leaves of the auricula."
5. Now and again there is a dash of extra sweetness poured into life's cup,
Some special deliverance, some unlooked-for interposition, some undeserved and unusual benediction, sent apparently for no other object than to satisfy God's passion for giving. And here I must renounce my task,-no human pencil can describe all that God pours into the lot of our life; many of the constituents are too subtle for detection; many are too divine for comprehension; many are too numerous for computation. Besides, no life-cup is mixed in quite the same proportions. Our Father carefully studies our constitution, and then suits His preparation to our need; and since we are infinitely various in our make, there is an infinite diversity in the draughts which He sets before us on the table which He spreads.
But whatever blessing is in our cup, it is sure to run over. With Him the calf is always the fatted calf; the robe is always the best robe; the joy is unspeakable; the peace passeth understanding; the grace is so abundant that the recipient has all-sufficiency for all things, and abounds in every good work. There is no grudging in God's benevolence He does not measure out His goodness as the apothecary counts his drops and measures his drams, slowly and exactly, drop by drop.
God's way is alway characterised by multitudinous and overflowing bounty; like that in nature, which is so profuse with beauty and life that every drop of the ocean, and every square inch of the forest glade, and every molecule of matter teems with marvels, and defies the research and investigation of man. Well may we each cry with the apostle, "I have all, and abound."
On the shore of one of the vast fresh water lakes of America stands a humble log-built cabin occupied by a family of settlers from the old country. A little child which has been playing around all the morning, and has become tired and thirsty, goes within to ask its mother for water; and the mother, taking a cup, goes with it down to the white sands on which the mimic breakers dash with musical cadence, dips it in, and lifts it, brim. ruing and dripping with a stream of crystal drops, to her darling's lips. That is the way in which God deals with us. He gives to all liberally, and does not upbraid. There is more in Him than we can ever need; and He gives us more than we really can use for ourselves. Let us see to it that we so hold our cups as that their overflowings may not run to waste, but may drop into other cups, the cups of those that have not so much as we have. Oh, that our paths might be like the paths of God, which, when they drop fatness, drop upon the parched pastures of the wilderness, so that the little hills are girded about with joy, and become at last covered with flocks! ,' They shout for joy, they also sing."
But it is especially in connection with spiritual blessing that the cup most often seems to overflow. This has been the experience of many eminent saints. In one of his seasons of rapt communion John Welch, of Scotland, cried, "O Lord, hold Thy hand; it is enough. Thy servant is a clay vessel, and can contain no morel" And John Flavel tells us that once when he was alone on a journey his thoughts began to swell and rise higher and higher, till at last they became an overwhelming flood. Such was the attitude of his mind, such the refreshing taste of heavenly joys, and such the full assurance of his interest therein, that he truly lost the sight and sense of this world, and of the concerns thereof. Many years after he called that day one of the days of heaven, and professed that he understood more of the life of heaven by it than by all the books he ever read, or sermons he ever heard about it.
Certain it is that our Lord Jesus meant us to have a more abiding experience of such joys. He not only came to give us life, but life more abundantly. He spoke unto us His inimitable words, that our joy might be full. He meant our hearts to delight themselves with fatness, and to be satisfied with the favour of the Lord. His ideal for us may be compared to those rocky basins hollowed out by a perpetual fall of water, and lined by an infinite variety of exquisite vegetation, into which the fullness of the river, fed from perennial springs, is ever overflowing; and from which the overflow is ever passing out in a constant stream to join the eddying currents, to fill some lesser bowl beneath, or to play some part in fertilising the multitudinous flowers and plants which stretch out eager roots to its nourishing tide. Let us not hoard what we have got. Let us freely permit our cups to run over. Far from us be the niggardliness of the miser who dares not give because he fears he will not get. Let us be prodigal and spendthrift of our wealth; for we know that it is inexhaustible, being supplied from our Father's hand; and one of the laws of His kingdom is that we receive in the precise proportion with which we give.
One last word: be sure to take the cup of salvation. There can be no greater slight to a giver than to have his gifts neglected. Yet how many cups God sets before us which we refuse to taste! Some appear to think that God does not mean them to be thoroughly happy; and if they drink their cups of joy, it must be on the sly, or with words of apology. Some only drink half; or if they drink all they instil some bitter ingredient of their own, lest the draught should be too delicious. How often we forget that God has given us all things richly to enjoy! And when we are sure that He has given us aught, let us not shrink from taking the cup from His hand. Sometimes we have not because we are too blind to see, or too slow to take the cups which God is preparing for us.
And as we drink, let us be sure to call upon the name of the Lord. Full often, if we dare to do so, we shall find that the bitter medicine which frightens us has been suddenly changed into the very wine of life. There is an old legend of an ancient cup filled with poison, and treacherously placed into the king's hand. He signed the sign of the cross, and named the name of God, and it shivered at his feet. So take the name of God as your test. Name it over the cups which allure you ere you raise them to your lips, be they friendships, schemes, plans, business. That name will either show the adder that lurks in their heart, as in the goblet of the old Egyptian feast, or it will transmute common things to sacramental use, and make ordinary cups like that which we use at the table of our Lord, when over it have been spoken those memorable words, "This do in remembrance of me."