Isaiah 54:10 For the mountains shall depart, and the hills be removed; but my kindness shall not depart from you… My kindness shall not depart from thee. How much does depart in this world! There are departed sorrows, departed joys, departed friends; and in one sense, concerning life and joy and duty, the world is full of graves. But we have an unchanging Lord, Jesus Christ, "the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever." "My kindness!" Is there not a comfort in the very emphasis? For much kindness does depart. Fervent, but evanescent, it has its little day, and then vanishes away. "We are such stuff as dreams are made of." The nobility of our nature fails before the strains of littleness in character of others and distance of place and time. The eternal constancy is beautiful. Mark the connection of thought. The mountains may depart, Galilee's lake may embosom the surrounding hills, but the great Father's love is immutable and eternal. To take to heart these words would be to dispel our darkest fears. A faith strong enough to grasp this will light up every forest, and overcome every foe. There are strange mysteries of suffering in this world. Sorrow has many synonyms in human speech answering to the many phases of human experience. There are agonies of endurance, breaches of trust, sighings of solitude, sadnesses of disappointment, wailings of bereavement. To-day there are disciples terrified in the storm, Rachels mourning for their departed, Peters dropping scalding tears over denials of the Lord. Can it be wondered at that in such a world, amid such human trials and such spiritual experiences, kindness - the Divine kindness - should be so precious a thing? Let us recall the multitude of God's mercies; let us remember his hand in the glacier-passes of temptation, and the nights of tribulation. The strings of our human harps must sweep forth the music of love. There has been no change in Christ. 1. THE SURPRISE. Think of what we are! Fickle, irresolute, ungrateful, unfaithful. Our God is a God of insight. He searcheth the heart. He sees not only conduct, but character. No disguise can cloak from him. And what secrets there are in these hearts of ours! There are mirrors there which flash hack, even to ourselves, the hidden things of darkness. Yet he loves us still! The previous chapter says, "All we like sheep have gone astray." Yet it is the stray lambs the Saviour seeks, and the poor prodigal wanderer the Father loves! The strongest ties we know of are in our human relationships; they are images of the Divine love. Only an artificial theology has made the rectoral character of God override the paternal. Think you that on some wild Christmas, amid home's most festive scenes, with the children and the children's children about him, that father, whose hair is whiter than the winter snow, can forget the prodigal? With the ruddy fire-glow around him, and the yule logs piled high, his mind wanders over the bleak and barren moorland of the outside world; and one faint knock at the portal, one weary step, one quivering lip, brings more music to his heart than the tabret and the dance. He knows all about the squandered wealth, the profligate life, the reckless pilgrimage of vanity. But his kindness cannot depart from him, for he is a father still. I claim for God the very amplest application of that analogy. "Now then we are ambassadors for Christ,... we pray you in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God." "In Christ's stead!" What words! Many evil things the Church has done - Roman, Anglican, and Puritan - would look strange enough if Christ's gentle image had been thought upon, and men had inscribed above it, "We are Christ's!" God gave such tension and tenderness to the human heart to make our fatherhood a parable of his own! "If we knew all!" Thus even we who love him, who have been reconciled to him, say sometimes in our darker moods. Does God know all? Then could he be kind to us still. We have served other gods. We have been faithless stewards. We have been at heart callous and cold. Yet to us comes this message of the eternal constancy: "My kindness shall not depart from thee." II. THE CONTRAST. Think of what human nature is. We make retrospect concerning ourselves. We do not depreciate humanity when we say that kindness is an uncertain thing. We do not charge it upon others to the exclusion of ourselves. We are all unstable as water. We find how difficult it is to be unselfish. And no kindness can be perpetual without that. There are occasions when kindness is lacking in us; when a feeble witticism has wounded a friend; when a cruel sarcasm has bruised a brother's sensibilities; when a personal enjoyment has inflicted deprivation on others. Kindness is easy when its manifestations are costless. Nay, it cannot be dignified with the name; for it ministers to our own pride and satisfaction. But we cannot conceal the fact that courtesy, compassion, and care do fail, and, in one word, "love" is absent. I am not speaking of the false kindness of the deceiver, or the tender mercies of the gay, or the heartless mannerism which feigns affection. This is devils' work, and fills the sinner's night of death with spectres worse than the genius of Dante ever described or Dore ever designed. I am speaking of the common fact of instability in human feeling, inconstancy in human love. Explainable, indeed, sometimes by the detection of selfishness, superficiality, or unworthiness, as we think, in others, but manifest, in some measure, in us all. Now, the Divine Saviour is the ideal of all unselfishness. He gave himself. He humbled himself. He became obedient unto death - even the death of the cross - for us. While we were yet enemies, he died for us. And this was no solitary embodiment of his nature. It was a revelation of what his eternal nature is. Take, then, a review of yourself; take a review of society - and forget not all the revelations you have had of blessed contrast in God, whose kindness has not departed from you. III. THE REVIEW. Think of what the past time says. Life has been full of mercy to us all. Homes have been revisited, friends have been restored, love has been consummated, new homes have been set up, accident has been averted, health has been restored, deliverance has been vouchsafed, affliction has been sanctified, and religious faith has in some cases been renewed and restored. Most wonderful of all is this. We have lived through seasons in which subtle temptations have had their enchanter's wand broken, and difficulties in our Christian faith have been removed. True, indeed, it is that to some these words would mean nothing - would, perhaps, raise a smile of condescending pity for those of us who still believe in a God at all. Some there are who wonder at the worship which rises above "the stream of tendency," or the laws of evolution, to the Fountain of Life and Power which fills the universe with life and joy; and to others the words would sound like the bitter irony of fate. Kindness! when the fig tree has withered, and there is slender produce in the vine? for some have not yet learned that Providence has higher ends than to weave purple robes and to grow costly fruits. What blessedness there is to most of us in the continuous belief in a personal God and Father - in a hand that rules, a voice that speaks, and a heart that loves! Truly it sufficeth us to show us the Father; for, try as men may, they can never create an impersonal religion. Greece raised her altars to Pity and Fame, and the abstract virtues; but the testimony of history was the total neglect of them all. The human heart can worship a Divine heart only - must seek after a God, even if he be "the Unknown God." Certainly, also, we cannot worship, adore, praise, and glorify any embodied idea of humanity - the positivists cannot make a beautiful image of that. No; its shame, its vice, its corruption, its evil, remain; the statue may have gold in it, but it has iron and clay as well. The Lord revealed in the Bible is our God and Father to-day! "My soul thirsteth for God, the living God;" "Unto thee, O Lord, will I sing;" "Great is the Lord, and of great power, and his understanding is infinite." We retain our prayer, "Our Father which art in heaven." We retain our pathway of approach. "Christ, the Way, the Truth, and the Life." We retain our altar of love, the one Mediator between God and man, the Lord Jesus Christ. Looking back, then, and taking a review of life preserved and life sustained, of friends given or restored, of love cemented and consecrated, of faith purified and elevated, must not our seal be set afresh to the truth of the words, "My kindness shall not depart from thee"? IV. THE PROSPECT. Think what the future will bring. The coming days. These are the most constant theme of our meditation. We project ourselves into life's to-morrow. We never live wholly for the present time. We are all artists in this wise, colouring our picture by means of our faith or our experience. We are sometimes morbid, and doubt whether good times will come to us again, forgetful of the past seasons of trouble which gave place in time to the brighter morrow. Alas! we too often say, "Hath God forgotten to be gracious? hath he in anger shut up his tender mercy?" Kindness departed! That is our earthly and our spiritual dread. But the bow in the cloud is God's silent prophecy. And there is a bow in every cloud, if we will but gaze upon the heaven of mercy above us. To-morrow is coming, but on its wings mercy and love will also come. God will still show forth his loving-kindness in the morning. The throne of God is not to be covered with the crape of a departed majesty. We believe in "the Eternal. From everlasting to everlasting thou art God." God is the Good! His sceptre is no iron mace of authority, but he is the Father of our spirits, and the God of our salvation. What will to-morrow bring? The seed-time and the harvest. The summer sky and the song of the reaper. The release of the ice-bound fountain and the beauty and fragrance of a thousand fields. To-morrow there is to be more and more departure of ignorance and wrong, of desolation and darkness. The light is to shine more and more unto the perfect day; for Christ must reign. Every season of life will have its kindness. If father and mother forsake us in childhood, the Lord will take us up. If widowhood comes, Christ will be the Husband of the widow. Frosty, but kindly, as Shakespeare says, will old age be itself, when the evening comes, and death too will be kind when it comes, taking down the tabernacle with a quiet hand, and gently hushing us into the calm sleep of the child whose morning is heaven. Let us get rid, then, of the habit of dark foreboding, for thereby we deprive ourselves of the music of to-day. We all sometimes think of Divine mercy as though its meridian had passed, and as though God's grace was setting over the plains of life. We have an ever-living Saviour, an indwelling Spirit, the blessing of spiritual sonship, the foretaste of the sweet vineyards of Canaan, and a fountain ever open for sin and uncleanness. Let us seek to make God's kindness in its constancy the image of our own. Love is the law of heaven; the angels are all ministering spirits. When poor Hagar, with haggard eyes and dishevelled hair, was in the wilderness, it was an angel-hand which led her to the well. When Gideon was threshing his wheat, his face pictures forth the great sorrow of his people, and we hear him saying, "O my Lord, if the Lord be with us, why then is all this befallen us?" And an angel's voice then reassures him with the promise, "Surely I will be with thee. When the ship is driven helplessly through the storm, an angel-voice says to the apostle, Fear not, Paul!" Yes; there is a sympathy and a constant kindness in the angelic ministry. And we are to be ministering spirits too. A part of our nature, constituted as it is to live in others, would be shorn of its blessedness if we could not also be ministers of kindness. Onward, then, my brethren, with these words on your banner. The light which falls on the letters of gold will attract the eyes of others, as you show them what a religious faith can do in renewing the life of the world. Faith in God our Saviour will change the countenance, strengthen even the physical nerves, and make us better companions and brighter friends. Like a talisman, these words will keep you from the dread which has darkened man's earthly life in every age. You will bear them aloft on your banner, not as rejoicing in a God who loves and cares for you alone; but you will say to the world, "Let our people be your people, and our God your God." Yield your hearts to him. "Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth." You will fear no evil, for the Lord is with you! There. will be manna in the wilderness; the Jordan itself will be dry; the warder will throw wide the open gates at your home-going, and the Saviour will give you the welcome rest. These words are those of the faithful and true. "My kindness shall not depart from thee." - W.M.S. Parallel Verses KJV: For the mountains shall depart, and the hills be removed; but my kindness shall not depart from thee, neither shall the covenant of my peace be removed, saith the LORD that hath mercy on thee. |
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