GOD'S LOVING-KINDNESS

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · May 9, 1906

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 32, No. 19.

GOD'S LOVING-KINDNESS.

ONE of the declarations of the glorious psalms, repeated over and over is that God's "loving-kindness [A. R. V.] endureth forever." Of this we are glad; but we are prone to measure it by what is pleasing to us rather than what is profitable. And when we refuse as His loving-kindness what is not pleasing, we never reap the profit.

Yet God's loving-kindness is often manifest in the sorest trials and greatest heart-breakings. He knows that we need them, need them for our salvation, need them for our growth, need them for our usefulness, need them that we may help others.

There is no growth to the bird which remains in the parent shell. It soon dies of its own corruption. The soul, anxious always to stay in its environment of ease, dies of its own selfishness.

Poor, refractory Jacob felt that the visible deprivation of sons and the famine were all against him, but out of it all the loving-kindness of God was working for his good.

God sent Joseph before His people; he was sold for a servant, cast into prison, his feet hurt with fetters, was laid in chains of iron, until the time that the word of Jehovah had tested him sufficiently to make him a saviour to Israel and Egypt; yet God's loving-kindness was in it all, and all became necessary to develop the best in Joseph.

"As an eagle that stirreth up her nest That fluttereth over her young, Spreadeth abroad her wings, Taketh them, beareth them on her pinions," so Jehovah in His loving-kindness deals with His children. Surely, it is not joy to the young eagle to be cast from the nest on the beetling crag to flutter and blunder his way to the rocks beneath; but ere he strikes the ground the parent back proves a soft resting place, and the eaglet is borne to greater heights, and again left upon the elastic air. Only so can he learn to use his wings and become king of birds. Only so must God in His providence take out from the easy position, the soft nest, the smooth waters, the monotonous sunshine, His children. They must meet hard

things; must rest on rock or crag; sail through the breakers and storm and stress, and so develop mental and moral thew and muscle. Yet we may refuse; then sometime His scribe will write: "Moab hath been at ease from his youth, and he hath settled on his lees, and hath not been emptied from vessel to vessel, neither hath he gone into captivity; therefore his taste remaineth in him, and his scent is not changed." And beyond this to Moab was utter destruction.

We may refuse God's changes as did Moab and die; or we may use the providences which God's loving-kindness permits to come, or He in wisdom sends, and by the crushing of our selfish hopes and plans, and the incoming of His life, exhale a holy fragrance which wins souls to Him, and in our triumph reveal "the glory of His grace."