| J.R. Miller D.D. | Page 13 |
The position of the everlasting arms in this picture is suggestive – “Underneath.” They are always underneath us. No matter how low we sink, in weakness, in faintness, in pain, in sorrow, we never can sink below these everlasting arms. We never can drop out of their clasp. A father tired to save his child in the waves, wildly clasping his arms about the loved form. But his arms, though nerved by most passionate love, were too weak, and the child slipped away from them and sank down in the dark waters. But evermore, in the deepest floods, the everlasting arms will be underneath the feeblest, most imperiled child of God. Sorrow is very deep but still and forever, in the greatest grief, these arms of love are underneath the sufferer. Then when death comes, and every earthly support is gone from beneath us, when every human arm unclasps and every face of love fades from before our eyes, and we sink away into what seems darkness and the shadow of death, we shall only sink into the everlasting arms underneath us.
The word “are,” too, must not be overlooked – “Underneath are the everlasting arms.” This is one of the wonderful present tenses of the Bible. To every trusting believer, to each one, in all the ages, to you who today are reading these words and trying to learn the lesson, as well as to those to whom the words were first spoken, God says, “Underneath you are now, this moment, every moment, the everlasting arms.”
“Whose mind is stayed on thee.” That is the final secret of peace. The reason so many of us do not find the blessing are disturbed so often by such trifles of care or sorrow or loss is because our minds are not stayed on God. We are distressed by every little disappointment, by every failure in plan or expectation of ours, by every hardness in our circumstances or our condition, by every most trivial loss of money, as if money were life’s sole dependence, as if man lived by bread only. A trifling illness frightens us. The most trivial things in our common life disturb us and send us off into pitiable fits of anxiety, spoiling our days for us, blotting the blue of the sky and putting out the stars. The trouble is, we are not trusting God, our minds are not stayed on him. That is what we need to learn – to rest in the Lord, to be silent to him, to commit our way to him.
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