THIS is one of the surprising sayings of our Lord, spoken when trouble rolled in billows around Him and the little band who were presently to forsake Him and be scattered. But the words were spoken in the serenity of His own soul, and from a heart which had found peace that flowed like a river in the center of the will of God. The words fall like a benediction on the troubled heart of the world today.
One meets few untroubled hearts in the daily contacts of life these days. Every man and woman bears a burden, some greater, some less—though each thinks his the most onerous and the most severe. The war has accentuated tremendously the troubles of mankind, and for this very reason the injunction of the Lord should fall like the very balm of Gilead on our souls today.
Who would wish to live today without faith? What a ghastly travesty all life would be did our faith not light a candle for us in the blackness. To the man or woman without faith in God the world must present a dreary aspect, just a horror of great darkness unrelieved by a single ray of light. It is little wonder that men’s hearts are restless and filled with fears and forebodings. And yet it is in just such conditions as these that we hear the words of the Lord falling again upon our ears— “Let not your heart be troubled.”
The untroubled heart is the result of a deep, abiding faith in God. Nothing else, it seems to us, can preserve our sanity and our spiritual balance in times like these. If we are to face the future with assurance and calm, if we are to do the work God has given us to do, it is essential that the untroubled heart must be ours. The shadow of the Cross lay over the Saviour when He uttered these words. It might be said, of course, that it lay over all His life, but in the darkest of its menacing aspects it appears here. It is always at the darkest hour in our history when we are hemmed in by trouble, when the human outlook is utterly hopeless, when the waves of the sea roar and we feel we must be submerged in the billows—His word comes to us again— “Let not your heart be troubled.” The very blackness may presage the dawn.
Were I a preacher I would take this text often. There is not the slightest danger of ever exhausting its comforting message. This is an exhortation from our Lord, a command, and His commands are always enabling’s. If we believe in God, we are to believe in Him. According to the depth of faith, or belief in Him, we shall maintain the untroubled heart in our breast. There are some things that wars and rumors of wars cannot touch. They may destroy the material things around us; they may rob us of our possessions, take away our lives and destroy our bodies; fill our eyes with tears and wring our hearts with anguish, but they cannot touch the soul. And still our Lord is telling us that we are not to let our hearts be troubled. He can cause us to rise in triumph above these things, and to ride on the high places of the earth by faith.
The Evangelical Christian.