Seeking Not Ours, but Us
By C. M. S.
God loves us and cares for us. If he did not, he would not have been hunting us ever since our first parents hid from him in Eden. Wrong put in us the first distrusting instinct to flee from our best Friend, and our own wrongs have kept it alive. “Come unto me,” has ever been God’s invitation to man. When we had set our faces toward the evil and toward the death that lay hidden in that treacherous way, God was still saying, “Turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye die?” God knows that death everlasting lies in wait for every one who walks in the ways of wickedness. So he says, “As I live, saith the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live.” “There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.” Man is apt to feel his own sufficiency in judging for his good; but against that God warns him. Without the “heavenly eye-salve” man is powerless to choose between the way that leads to life and the way that leads to death. The way that leads to death may seem at its branching to run parallel with the other. Though its goal is the gateway of death, yet it seems right to the man walking in his own counsel. The trouble with the “false shepherds” of Israel was that “they all look to their own way.” In that they found darkness for light, deception for their trust, and the way of death in place of the way of life. But the Lord says: “Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth.” In looking to God we find his way, and strength to walk therein; and at the goal to which that way leads are joy and peace and satisfaction, eternal life, and every good thing. That is the way in which God would have every man, woman, and child in this world walk. His salvation is promised to the people in “all the ends of the earth.” “Whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.” There is a way of life. Christ lived to make it manifest. That way is mapped out and consecrated by the blood of the Son of God. At every obstacle in that way Christ stands to strengthen the weary feet, the feeble knees, and to heal the hurt of his people. When discouragement stands in the way of the child of God, Christ himself is there to turn a brighter beam of light upon the comforting promises of God. When doubts assail, he is still there to show to those who wish assurance the everlasting verities of the Father’s word. And when the great enemy death stands on the threshold demanding his choice from the family circle, the trusting child of God can hold before him that promise and that provision which robs death of its terror, and makes the captivity of death a matter of transient duration only. Relying on that word, the captivity becomes a “false imprisonment,” and the great Judge declares it so, and opens the prison-house. So the whole course of man’s existence from the day of accountability to the day when the record of life is done, has all been seen and planned for at every step; and this being so, no circumstance nor combination of circumstances can arise that will find a weak place in the plan of salvation. No matter how trying the experience, how disheartening the outlook, God has made it possible for man to be victorious over it all. Faith is the passport to victory, and when the yearning heart presents that passport and calls upon that Name which is above every name, there is no question about the result. “Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved,” says the inspired Word. That “whosoever” goes right down into the haunts of the poorest, the weakest, the wretchedest mortals that ever turned away from the narrow pathway of our Saviour; and whosoever in that lowest stratum of existence shall turn from his folly and “call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” God is hunting men even there, and holding before them the map of the only way by which they can turn their captivity into victory, turn their sure-impending death into the certainty of eternal life, their sadness into joy, their mourning into shouts of triumphant song. God is still calling for mankind, still calling to individual man, to turn from hopeless captivity to glorious freedom; from the service of a cruel tyrant to the fellowship and sonship of a gracious Lord; from the gates of death to the portals of everlasting life. Listen to his pleading, flee not from his seeking, yield to his entreaties, and live.