| J.R. Miller D.D. | Page 16 |
That is one part of our lesson. The other is that we can get this peace by having our minds stayed on God, that God may keep us in peace. For even he cannot keep us unless we put ourselves into his hands and leave ourselves there. The staying upon God is our part in securing the blessing that is promised. It must be a voluntary reposing. It must be an unbroken confiding. To trust and sing today, and then to fear and doubt tomorrow, is not the way to find perfect peace. “Trust ye in the Lord forever,” is the lesson that is set for us.
Then the peace never shall be broken. It may be disturbed for a little while by some sudden trial or sorrow, or by overwhelming trouble, but God very gently helps back into the nest those who have been thrown out of it by any such experience. One day President Lincoln and a friend were walking together beside a hedgerow, and came upon a little bird fluttering in the grass. It had fallen out of its nest in the bushes and could not get back again. The great, gentle hearted man stopped in his walk, picked up the little thing, sought along the hedge until he found the nest, and put the bird back again into its place. That is what Christ is seeking to do every day with lives that have been jostled out of the nest of peace. With hand infinitely gentle he would ever help us back to the peace we have lost awhile.
The staying of the mind upon God suggests repose. We are to let ourselves down upon his strength, into the arms of his love, and to rest there, without fear, without perturbation, without question. But this does not mean that we shall drop our tasks and duties out of our hands. Always, in every exhortation to trust God, obedience is implied and presupposed. “Seek ye first his kingdom and his righteousness,” said the Master. When we do this, he continued, we need never be anxious, for then all our needs shall be supplied. It is only in the faithful doing of God’s will that true peace ever can be found. We cannot commit either ourselves or our affairs to God unless we have done our own part faithfully or are ready to do it.
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