"Not my will, but Thine be done!"--Luke, xxii. 42.
Where was there ever resignation like this! The life of Jesus was one
long martyrdom. From Bethlehem's manger to Calvary's cross, there was
scarce one break in the clouds; these gathered more darkly and ominously
around Him till they burst over His devoted head as He uttered His
expiring cry. Yet throughout this pilgrimage of sorrow no murmuring
accent escaped His lips. The most suffering of all suffering lives was
one of uncomplaining submission.
"Not _my_ will, but _Thy_ will," was the motto of this wondrous Being!
When He came into the world He thus announced His advent, "Lo, I come, I
delight to do _Thy will_, O my God!" When He left it, we listen to the
same prayer of blended agony and acquiescence, "O my Father, if it be
possible let this cup pass from me! _Nevertheless_ not as _I will_, but
as _Thou wilt_."
Reader! is this mind also in _you_? Ah, what are your trials compared to
His! What the ripples in your tide of woe, compared to the waves and
billows which swept over him! If He, the spotless Lamb of God, "murmured
not," how can _you_ murmur? _His_ were the sufferings of a bosom never
once darkened with the passing shadow of guilt or sin. _Your_ severest
sufferings are deserved, yea, infinitely less _than_ deserved! Are you
tempted to indulge in hard suspicions, as to God's faithfulness and
love, in appointing some peculiar trial? Ask yourself, Would Jesus have
done _this_? Should _I_ seek to pry into "the deep things of God," when
_He_, in the spirit of a weaned child, was satisfied with the solution,
"_Even so, Father, for so it seems good in Thy sight_"?
"Even so, _Father_!" Afflicted one! "tossed with tempest, and not
comforted," take that _word_ on which thy Lord pillowed His suffering
head, and make it, as He did, the secret of thy resignation.
The sick child will take the bitterest draught from a _father's_ hand.
"This cup which Thou, O God, givest me to drink, shall I not drink it?"
Be it mine to lie passive in the arms of Thy chastening love, exulting
in the assurance that all Thy appointments, though sovereign, are never
arbitrary, but that there is a gracious "need be" in them all. "My
Father!" my Covenant God! the God who _spared not Jesus_! It may well
hush every repining word.
Drinking deep of his sweet spirit of submission, you will be able thus
to meet, yea, even to welcome, your sorest cross, saying, "Yes, Lord,
all _is_ well, just because it is Thy blessed will. Take me, use me,
chasten me, as seemeth good in Thy sight. My will is resolved into
Thine. This trial is dark; I can not see the 'why and the wherefore' of
it--but 'not my will, but Thy will!' The gourd is withered; I can not
see the reason of so speedy a dissolution of the loved earthly shelter;
sense and sight ask in vain why these leaves of earthly refreshment have
been doomed so soon to droop in sadness and sorrow. But it is enough.
'The Lord prepared the worm;' 'not _my_ will, but _Thy_ will!'"
Oh, how does the stricken soul honor God by thus being _dumb_ in the
midst of dark and perplexing dealings, recognizing in these, part of the
needed discipline and training for a sorrowless, sinless, deathless
world; regarding every trial as a link in the chain which draws it to
heaven, where the whitest robes will be found to be those here baptized
with suffering, and bathed in tears!
"ARM YOURSELVES LIKEWISE WITH THE SAME MIND."
Third Day.