It is sweet to see the Lord’s hand in all His ways of tender, faithful love towards us. He only loves. Judgment is passed. Love alone remains for the dear children of His grace. There is nothing penal in the dispensations of a Father’s hand. He chastens us; but if He does, it is only “that we may be partakers of His holiness.”
(Heb. 12:1010For they verily for a few days chastened us after their own pleasure; but he for our profit, that we might be partakers of his holiness. (Hebrews 12:10).) And, blessed be His name, if the chastening leaves a deep furrow, in the bereaved heart, it is but a channel through which the love of our heavenly Father’s heart may flow. This love may be manifested in various ways. Sometimes He gives us a sight and a sense of the wretchedness and loathsomeness of our own nature, so that we cannot bear to look at ourselves; and then we are glad to turn to the blessed Lord and gaze on what we are in Him, who is in the Father’s presence for us. Such experience had David, Peter, Paul, and many others.
But sometimes His tender heart will seek to bring about the same blessed results by sore bereavement. He breaks one cord of the heart after another, until He comes to the last, and that, too, must go; for He will have us wholly to Himself. His love can endure no rivals.
However, though the relationship be broken on earth, the affections are formed anew in resurrection in connection with Christ, our heavenly center, where they can never more be interrupted. They are re-set, re-strung, re-established, forever, in purest, brightest glory. God must have us entirely to Himself. He cannot afford to let the affections of His children go, out after another. But oh! sweet thought! the cord which He has snapped on earth, He has joined in heaven, in resurrection life and glory. It is but the more closely, permanently, and gloriously joined, never, no never more to be undone. Sooner or later, every one of our heart-strings must be broken, with all that pertains to self and the world, and be restrung for a glorious immortality.
All this is divinely true, now, in the blessed Jesus. He is done with everything that could have kept us from God. He came, in perfect grace and love, into the state we were in by sin. Himself absolutely sinless, He passed through it all for us. “For in that He Himself suffered, being tempted, He is able to succor them that are tempted.” (Heb. 2:1818For in that he himself hath suffered being tempted, he is able to succor them that are tempted. (Hebrews 2:18).) And now He would have us, in reference to these things, to be as He is—to enter into His joy. He is now at home in the presence of God, leaving sin, nature, the world, and all such, behind. And He is now saying to us, “See what I have done, in you and for you.” Enter into the reality, and taste the sweetness of it all. “All things are yours. Lift up your eyes, and behold the fields of glory; reach hither your hand, and pluck the clusters from the vine of God. Let God be your joy your resource, your object, as He is Mine.”
There is no rest, no resource, but in the living God—no happiness, but in Him.