Isaiah 58:11 And the LORD shall guide you continually, and satisfy your soul in drought, and make fat your bones… Cannot a garden water itself? No. That is the answer, definite, cold — discouraging, encouraging, as we may take the term. Is it not enough to be a garden? what matter about the sunshine? who cares about the rain or the dew? Is it not enough to be a garden, a geometric form, pearled and diamonded with many a flower? The king's gardens cannot do without rain; Solomon's parterres wither away but for the morning dew and the summer shower. We need something from without. Cannot a man sustain himself by his own resources? He cannot. What do you mean by being a man? A figure is not a man; a corpse is not a man; a mere personality, if it could be detached from all other personalities, would not be a man. We cannot live upon stature or figure or aught that our hand can hold. Life is deeper; there is a sanctuary of life, a well far away, where spring water bubbles and gurgles and flashes out in the sunlight like a great gospel preached to the thirst of man. Self-sustenance is not the law of the body; why should it he the law of the mind? The mind is not sustained by itself. You have books; lay them down, be your own book. You cannot. What do you want with all these libraries, and museums, and academies, and colleges, and schools of every name and degree? These are the wheatfields which the soul reaps, and it needs them every one, for the soul is bigger than literature. The soul lives by friction with some other soul. God is fire. To come into happy attrition with Him, or contact, or friction, who can tell what may come out of that soul touching soul, man praying to God? We are continually undergoing a process of education. What hast thou that thou hast not received? Have you ever seen a garden that has been left to itself? What do you think of it? God waits to give us every one more water, more sustenance, more sunshine. What we might be if we would enjoy our privileges! (J. Parker, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: And the LORD shall guide thee continually, and satisfy thy soul in drought, and make fat thy bones: and thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters fail not. |
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