"Remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how He said"--
"A little while, and ye shall not see me; and again, a little while,
and ye shall see me, because I go to the Father."--John xvi. 16.
The Little While.
Long seem the moments when we are separated from the friend we love. An
absent brother--how his return is looked and longed for! The "Elder
Brother"--the "Living Kinsman"--sends a message to His waiting Church
and people--a word of solace, telling that _soon_ ("a little while,")
and He will be back again, never again to leave them.
There are indeed blessed moments of communion which the believer enjoys
with His beloved Lord _now_; but how fitful and transient! To-day, life
is a brief Emmaus journey--the soul happy in the presence and love of an
unseen Saviour. To-morrow, He is _gone_; and the bereft spirit is led
to interrogate itself in plaintive sorrow,--"Where is now thy God?" Even
when there is no such experience of darkness and depression, how much
there is in the world around to fill the believer with sadness! His Lord
rejected and disowned--His love set at nought--His providences
slighted--His name blasphemed--His creation groaning and travailing in
pain--disunion, too, among His people--His loving heart wounded in the
house of His friends!
But "yet a little while," and all this mystery of iniquity will be
finished. The absent Brother's footfall will soon be heard,--no longer
"as a wayfaring man who turneth aside to tarry for a night," but to
receive His people into the permanent "mansions" His love has been
preparing, and from which they shall go no more out. Oh, blessed day!
when creation will put on her Easter robes--when her Lord, so long
dishonoured, will be enthroned amid the hosannahs of a rejoicing
universe--angels lauding Him--saints crowning Him--sin, the dark
plague-spot on His universe, extinguished for ever--death swallowed up
in eternal victory!
And it is but "a little while!" "Yet a little while," we elsewhere read,
"and He that shall come, will come, and will not tarry" (literally, "a
little while as may be.") "He will stay not a moment longer," says
Goodwin, "than He hath despatched all our business in Heaven for us."
With what joy will He send His mission-Angel with the announcement, "the
little while is at an end;" and to issue the invitation to the great
festival of glory, "Come! for all things are ready!"
Child of sorrow! think often of this "_little while_." "The days of thy
mourning will soon be ended." There is a limit set to thy suffering
time,--"After that ye have suffered a WHILE." Every wave is numbered
between you and the haven; and then when that haven is reached, oh, what
an apocalypse of glory!--the "little while" of time merged into the
great and unending "while of eternity!"--to be _for ever with the
Lord_--the same unchanged and unchanging Saviour!
"A little while, and ye _shall_ see me!" Would that the eye of faith
might be kept more intently fixed on "that glorious appearing!" How the
world, with its guilty fascinations, tries to dim and obscure this
blessed hope! How the heart is prone to throw out its fibres here, and
get them rooted in some perishable object! Reader! seek to dwell more
habitually on this the grand consummation of all thy dearest wishes.
"Stand on the edge of your nest, pluming your wings for flight." Like
the mother of Sisera, be looking for the expected chariot.
"HE IS FAITHFUL THAT PROMISED."