The world has a scheme of redemption of its own, and men can themselves
do something for the brother who has fallen. But the plan involves,
invariably, a change of surroundings. Worldly wisdom says, of the youth
who is making a mess of his life, "Ship him off to the colonies, try him
with a new start on another soil." But the grace of God promises a far
more wonderful salvation. It makes possible a new start on the very
spot of the old failure. It leads a man back to the scene of his old
disloyalty, and promises him a new memory that shall blot out and redeem
the old. God does not take the depressed and discouraged out of their
surroundings. He adds an inward something that enables them to conquer
where they stand. It is not some new untried sphere that God gilds with
promise. It is the old place where one has already failed and fallen.
It is the valley of Achor, the scene of Israel's defeat, and Achan's
shame and sin, that God gives to His people as a door of hope.
In Italian history, during the Middle Ages, the republics of Pisa and
Genoa were often at war, and at one time the Genoese were badly beaten
in a sea-fight near the little island of Meloria. Some years after, a
Genoese admiral took his fleet to that same spot and said, "Here is the
rock which a Genoese defeat has made famous. A victory would make it
immortal." And sure enough, the fight that followed ended in a great
victory for Genoa. It is that sort of hope that God holds out to all
defeated souls who put their trust in Him. He points us back to our
valley of Achor, the place with a memory we do not like to think of, and
He says, There is your door of Hope, Go back and try again. And those
who go back in His strength are enabled to write a new memory upon the
old shame.
Our Lord and Master is very gracious to forgive us when we come to Him
in penitence to tell Him of the position we have lost by our
faithlessness or our cowardice, but He does not consent to the ultimate
defeat of the very feeblest of His soldiers. "Go back and try again,"
is His order. There are many, as Dr Matheson says, who offer us a
golden to-morrow, but it is only Christ who enables us to retrieve our
yesterday. For His grace is more than forgiveness. It is the promise
to reverse the memory of Achor, to turn defeat into victory even yet.
Achor, further, literally means Trouble, and it is a great thing for us
when we have learned that even there God has for us a door of hope.
The valley of Trouble is perhaps the last place in the world where the
uninstructed would look for any fruit of harvest, and yet again and
again men have brought the fairest flowers of character and holiness out
of it. How many a devout and useful servant of Christ owes the
beginning of his allegiance to a serious illness, to some crippling
disappointment, to an overwhelming sorrow? In all humility there are
many who can say, It is good for me that I have been afflicted, and
there are many, many more about whom their friends often quote that
text.
"I walked a mile with Pleasure;
She chattered all the way,
But left me none the wiser
For all she had to say.
"I walked a mile with Sorrow,
And ne'er a word said she,
But oh, the things I learned from her,
When Sorrow walked with me!"
There is a door of Hope even in the valley of Trouble, and those who
tread it in God's company shall not fail to find it.
There is one other class who need to know that even in Achor there is a
door of hope, the depressed and discouraged. Phillips Brooks once
declared, "I came near doing a dreadful thing the other day. I was in
East Boston and I suddenly felt as if I must get away from everything
for a while. I went to the Cunard dock and asked if the steamer had
sailed. She had been gone about an hour. I believe if she had still
been there, I should have absconded." I wonder if there is any one who
has not known that feeling? When duty is dull, and circumstances
discouraging, when we seem to be merely ploughing the sands, "Oh," we
say, "for the wings of a dove!" Comfort and happiness and salvation
seem to lie solely in escape. And it may be that they do. But more
often the trouble is in ourselves, and would travel with us to the new
post.
If there be any depressed or discouraged reading these lines, I should
like to remind them of God's promise to give the valley of Achor--that
is the depressing scene of your labours, my brother--for a door of hope.
You are looking for your hope somewhere else, anywhere else provided it
be out of your present rut and drudgery. In reality your door of hope
lies in the rut, in the valley itself. It is not escape you need. It
is just a braver faith that God is in your valley with you, and that He
needs you there.
Take a firmer grip of that, and go back to where you serve, and you will
find, please God, that even in your valley He has opened for you a door
of Hope and Gladness.
May all those who are living and working these days in the valley of
Achor find in it somewhere God's Door of Hope.