The Lord Jesus once spoke of the “cares of this life,” and one great object of His coming into the world was to teach men how to get free from those cares.
What are some of the “cares of this life”? There is, first of all, the care connected with its maintenance. How to make both ends meet presses very heavily upon some. A husband’s income is perhaps barely sufficient, and his family’s expenses are increasing. Worse still, he may be actually out of work. In another case, there is a widow with young children, and work is uncertain. Is it possible under such circumstances to be free from care? We answer with unhesitating certainty, yes, for God has given us an object lesson as to this. The birds have neither storehouse nor barn, yet they sing as blithely as if all the world were theirs. How are they fed? “God feedeth them” is the divine explanation.
The Example of Our Lord
If we can go to Him for all we need, no matter how great, we need have no care. We have said that the Lord Jesus Christ came into the world to teach men to trust God. Was anyone ever so poor as He, or so tried? And remember, He had been rich (2 Cor. 8:99For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that ye through his poverty might be rich. (2 Corinthians 8:9)). Possibly the greatest care comes not to those who have been poor and remain poor, but to those who have known more carefree days. The lesson Christ came to teach has therefore a special application to them.
He was a “reproach of men,” “despised of the people,” laughed to scorn. His most intimate followers forsook Him. But there was one thing that wrung His heart more than all this: He was forsaken of God when made sin for us. And yet running all through the psalm there is a tone of unshaken trust. Never for a moment did faith waver, though He was brought into the dust of death. It is that One who says to us, in the midst of all our cares, that not one sparrow is forgotten before God.
We are bound, of course, to use all proper means. But it will generally be found that it is not what we can do that brings the care, but what we cannot do. And it is just here we have to trust in God, simply resting in the words, “Your Father knoweth.” Do all you can do, but never be troubled about what you cannot do. Also, let us remember that a man’s life consists not in the abundance of the things which he possesses. It is astonishing, when we are put to the test, how little of real happiness depends upon things or circumstances. Christ had no money and sometimes not where to lay His head, and yet He could speak of His peace and His joy.
Ill Health
Ill health is often another source of care. Your very success in life may depend upon good health, and that seems denied. Or you may have others depending upon you, and you are feeling less and less equal to the strain. Perhaps few things are more trying than to feel unequal, physically and mentally, to the demands of your calling, and yet to be obliged to face them day after day. Under such circumstances everything is apt to become draped in black. All this may be purely physical, and there is the physical side of getting free from care as well as the spiritual, for man is body as well as soul and spirit. To pay due attention to each is one of the great problems of life. But the very remembrance that your feeling of depression has no real cause in circumstances, but only in some transitory condition of your body, will enable you to arise and shake yourself free from it. There is one text, too, which has often been like a sheet-anchor under pressure of this kind: “God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted [tested] above that ye are able; but will with the [trial] also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it” (1 Cor. 10:1313There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it. (1 Corinthians 10:13)).
Anticipation
Another cause of care is the habit of anticipating trouble and meeting difficulties halfway. How much arises from this mischievous foreboding! It would serve a useful purpose if we kept a record for a month of things that might have happened, but which never did happen. We could never exhaust the number of matters about which we trouble ourselves, and all to no purpose. Many of us might bear the same testimony as the man who put up on his office wall the words, “The greatest troubles of my life have been those which never came.”
Once we overheard a conversation that passed between two Christians, with which we were impressed. The one was aged and had been prosperous, but in the decline of life misfortune overtook him through the dishonesty of another. We can see him now as he stood in the doorway, his shining face set off by an abundance of white hair. As they parted, his friend said to him, quoting from Psalm 34, “Well, remember, ‘This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him, and saved him out of all his troubles.’” “Ah,” he said (and they were the last words we ever heard him utter), “He has done a greater thing for me than that: He has delivered me from all my fears.” (See the same psalm, verse 4.)
Yes, it is those fears that cast such a dark cloud over many a life. And yet how often they are groundless fears! But if trouble actually does come and the trial is upon us, then let us remember the words of the psalm already quoted: “This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him, and saved him out of all his troubles.” He cried just as if he had fallen into some pit or was being washed out to sea. And this is just how we must cry to God in our trouble.
In this connection, there are three verses we might do well to keep in mind:
Suffering
In regard to anticipating troubles, we once visited an old Christian suffering from a wasting disease, who expected, in the ordinary course of things, to last some three or four months longer and gradually to grow weaker and weaker until life ebbed away. This was a great trial to him, for he was a widower, living in the house of his daughter, a widow, and he seemed hardly able to bear the thought of the burden that his prolonged illness and consequent helplessness would be to her. Seeing his trouble, we knelt down and asked God that His child might be spared the many days of weariness that seemed to be between him and his longed-for release. The answer came more promptly than either of us could have expected. Instead of three months of weary waiting, there remained not three hours. We saw him at twelve. At two o’clock the same day his spirit was absent from the body and present with the Lord. “Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof” (Matt. 6:3434Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. (Matthew 6:34)). Here is our warrant for living, as someone has said, within the compass of twenty-four hours. And this is one secret of how to be free from care.
R. Elliott (adapted)