'The sparrow hath found a house, and the swallow a nest for herself,'
while I! We do not know what the Psalmist's circumstances were, but if
we accept the conjecture that he may have accompanied David in his
flight during Absalom's rebellion, we may fancy him as wandering on the
uplands across Jordan, and sharing the agitations, fears, and sorrows of
those dark hours, and in the midst of all, as the little company hurried
hither and thither for safety, thinking, with a touch of bitter envy, of
the calm restfulness and serene services of the peaceful Temple.
But, pathetic as is the complaint, when regarded as the sigh of a
minister of the sanctuary exiled from the shrine which was as his home,
and from the worship which was his occupation and delight, it sounds a
deeper note and one which awakens echoes in our hearts, when we hear in
it, as we may, the complaint of humanity contrasting its unrest with the
happier lot of lower creatures. Do you remember who it was that
said--and on what occasion He said it--'Foxes have holes, and birds of
the air have roosting-places, but the Son of Man hath not where to lay
His head'? That saying, like our text, has a narrower and a wider
application. In the former it pathetically paints the homeless Christ, a
wanderer in a land peculiarly 'His own,' and warns His enthusiastic
would-be follower of the lot which he was so light-heartedly undertaking
to share. But when Jesus calls Himself 'Son of Man,' He claims to be the
realised ideal of humanity, and when, as in that saying, He contrasts
the condition of 'the Son of Man' with that of the animal creation, we
can scarcely avoid giving to the words their wider application to the
same contrast between man's homelessness and the creatures' repose which
we have found in the Psalmist's sigh.
Yes! There is only one being in this world that does not fit the world
that he is in, and that is man, chief and foremost of all. Other beings
perfectly correspond to what we now call their 'environment.' Just as
the soft mollusc fits every convolution of its shell, and the hard shell
fits every curve of the soft mollusc, so every living thing corresponds
to its place and its place to it, and with them all things go smoothly.
But man, the crown of creation, is an exception to this else universal
complete adaptation. 'The earth, O Lord! is full of Thy mercy,' but the
only creature who sees and says that is the only one who has further to
say, 'I am a stranger on the earth.' He and he alone is stung with
restlessness and conscious of longings and needs which find no
satisfaction here. That sense of homelessness may be an agony or a joy,
a curse or a blessing, according to our interpretation of its meaning,
and our way of stilling it. It is not a sign of inferiority, but of a
higher destiny, that we alone should bear in our spirits the 'blank
misgivings' of those who, amid unsatisfying surroundings, have blind
feelings after 'worlds not realised,' which elude our grasp. It is no
advantage over us that every fly dancing in the treacherous gleams of an
April sun, and every other creature on the earth except ourselves, on
whom the crown is set, is perfectly proportioned to its place, and has
desire and possessions absolutely conterminous.
'The son of man hath not where to lay his head.' Why must he alone
wander homeless on the bleak moorland, whilst the sparrows and the
swallows have their nests and their houses? Why? Because they _are_
sparrows and swallows, and he is man, and 'better than many sparrows.'
So let us lay to heart the sure promises, the blessed hopes, the
stimulating exhortations, which come from that which, at first sight,
seems to be a mystery and half an arraignment of the divine wisdom, in
the contrast between the restlessness of humanity and the reposeful
contentment of those whom we call the lower creatures. Be true to the
unrest, brother! and do not mistake its meaning, nor seek to still it,
until it drives you to God.
II. These words bring to us a plea which we may use, and a pledge on
which we may rest.
'Thine altars, O Lord of hosts! my King and my God.' The Psalmist pleads
with God, and lays hold for his own confidence upon the fact that
creatures which do not understand what the altar means, may build beside
it, and those which have no notion of who the God is to whom the house
is sacred, are yet cared for by Him. And he thinks to himself, 'If I can
say "_My_ King and _my_ God," surely He that takes care of them will not
leave me uncared for.' The unrest of the soul that is capable of
appropriating God is an unrest which has in it, if we understand it
aright, the assurance that it shall be stilled and satisfied. He that is
capable of entering into the close personal relationship with God which
is expressed by that eloquent little pronoun and its reduplication with
the two words, 'King' and 'God'--such a creature cannot cry for rest in
vain, nor in vain grope, as a homeless wanderer, for the door of the
Father's house.
'Doth God care for oxen; or saith He it altogether for our sakes?'
'Consider the fowls of the air; your heavenly Father feedeth them.' And
the same argument which the Apostle used in the one of these sayings,
and our Lord in the other, is valid and full of encouragement when
applied to this matter. He that 'satisfies the desires of every living
thing,' and fills full the maw of the lowest creature; and puts the
worms into the gaping beak of the young ravens when they cry, is not the
King to turn a deaf ear, or the back of His hand, to the man who can
appeal to Him with this word on his lips, 'My King and my God!' We grasp
God when we say that; and all that we see of provident recognition and
supply of wants in dealings with these lower creatures should encourage
us to cherish calm unshakable confidence that every true desire of our
souls after Him is as certain to be satisfied.
And so the glancing swallows around the eaves of the Temple and the
twittering sparrows on its pinnacles may proclaim to us, not only a
contrast which is bitter, but a confidence which is sweet. We may be
sure that we shall not be left uncared for amongst the many pensioners
at His table, and that the deeper our wants the surer we are of their
supply. Our bodies may hunger in vain--bodily hunger has no tendency to
bring meat; but our spirits cannot hunger in vain if they hunger after
God; for that hunger is the sure precursor and infallible prophet of the
coming satisfaction.
These words not only may hearten us with confidence that our desires
will be satisfied if they are set upon Him, but they point us to the one
way by which they are so. Say 'My King and my God!' in the deepest
recesses of a spirit conscious of His presence, of a will submitting to
His authority, of emptiness expectant of His fulness; say that, and you
are in the house of the Lord. For it is not a question of place, it is a
question of disposition and desire. This Psalmist, though, when he began
his song, he was far away from the Temple, and though he finished it
sitting on the same hillside on which he began it, when he had ended it
was within the curtains of the sanctuary and wrapt about with the
presence of his God. He had regained as he sang what for a moment he had
lost the consciousness of when he began--viz. the presence of God with
him on the lone, dreary expanse of alien soil as truly as amidst the
sanctities of what was called His House.
So, brethren! if we want rest, let us clasp God as ours; if we desire a
home warm, safe, sheltered from every wind that blows, and inaccessible
to enemies, let us, like the swallows, nestle under the eaves of the
Temple. Let us take God for our Hope. They that hold communion with
Him--and we can all do that wherever we are and whatever we may be
doing--these, and only these, 'dwell in the house of the Lord all the
days of their lives.' Therefore, with deepest simplicity of expression,
our psalm goes on to describe, as equally recipients of blessedness,
'those that dwell in the house of the Lord,' and those in 'whose heart
are the ways' that lead to it, and to explain at last, as I have already
pointed out, that both the dwellers in, and the pilgrims towards, that
intimacy of abiding with God are included in the benediction showered on
those who cling to Him, 'Blessed is the man that trusteth in Thee!'