---

(with ver. 54): — Two cries ascend from the human heart to God — the cry of the lorn spirit for its Father, and the cry of icy after the Father has been found. A sad life, astir with perplexities, hedged in by shadows, utters its natural longings in the words, "I am a stranger in the earth," etc. The same life, emerging from the shadow, with God's light shining on its path, exclaims, "Thy statutes have been my songs," etc. Taken together, these words set forth our condition as strangers and pilgrims on the earth, and God's bountiful provision for meeting that condition in Christ.

I. The fact that we are strangers is forced upon us by our IGNORANCE. Apart from revelation, we know almost nothing of the world we live in, and absolutely nothing of its Lord. In every age, and to every thinking soul, arise the great questions, Who sent me into this earth? Why am I here? Whither am I going? The Gospel is God's answer to this cry. It is the revelation of the light which is behind sun and stars. What sun and star, what hill and stream cannot disclose of themselves, their Maker has disclosed in Christ. He reveals Himself in Christ as our Father. By His Spirit He says to each of us, "My child." He puts the faith and assurance of His fatherhood into our hearts. And this great truth of His fatherhood becomes the first round of the song which He has given to cheer us in the house of our pilgrimage.

II. OUR sins still more than our ignorance have put this sense of strangeness into our hearts, and the marks of it upon our countenance. When the soul awakens to spiritual consciousness, and finds itself in the presence of this great truth of the fatherhood of God, the first fact which confronts it is a sense of farness from the Father. It is God's mercy that He has not left us to rest in this depth of strangeness. He has made a way for us in Christ: — the new and living way by the blood. Christ dying for sinners, coming near to the lost to bring them near to God: — this is the light which God has kindled for all strangeness between the soul and God, the light which, touching the heart of the sinner, dissipates his estrangement and fills him with thankfulness and song.

III. Another proof that we are strangers is THE ESTRANGEMENT WE FIND AMONG MEN. Think of the conflicts, oppressions, misunderstandings among the inhabitants of the earth at any moment; think of hatreds so fierce and vital that only bloodshed can express their fury; whole races in subjection to other races over large sweeps of the globe, and during many generations; sectarian and selfish policies of nations, of the pride and isolation of classes; narrownesses and spites and arrogances of society, of the evil-speaking and backbiting and talebearing, and the hot and sullen tempers of men; quarrels and contests and ambitions which make up such a sum of the general sum of life: — these are the footprints of the stranger. Christ comes to us with the olive branch in His hand, as the great uniter and binder together. "One is your Father." He carries it up into the region occupied by thinkers and men of science, and down to the lowest levels of active and suffering life. He comes with the grand purpose of binding those who receive that word into a holy and abiding fellowship. Out from the contending and shifting crowd He calls a people for Himself, baptizes them with His own Spirit, inspires them with His truth, builds them into a holy nation, and rules over them as King.

IV. The last and saddest mark of the stranger upon us is DEATH. If we are all to die, if there is nothing beyond the grave, then, indeed, we are strangers in the earth; we are without a home or a fatherland. If there had been no light for this shadow, how great our misery should be! There could be no hope of an immortal fellowship for society, or of an immortal life for individual men. But, blessed be God! He has not hidden the future from His child. A home awaits us beyond the grave. A new life blooms for us in the very presence of God. Our torn and suffering earthly existence is to be crowned with glory and immortality in the world of the risen dead.

(A. Macleod, D. D.)

---

---

KJV: I am a stranger in the earth: hide not thy commandments from me.

WEB: I am a stranger on the earth. Don't hide your commandments from me.