Where is God when it hurts?

You will admit that it must be blessed for the Lord to have His redeemed people at home, and that it must be blessed for them to be there with Him, for as in the new earth there will be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying nor any more pain, and all tears will be wiped from all eyes, so must it be now in the presence of the Lord. You have no doubt as to all this, but what of yourself? You have sorrow and tears enough, you have been left lonely and desolate; and what a desolator death is! You hear the words of your friends, and they are sympathetic words, and are spoken for your consolation, but how cold the warmest of them seem to be. You feel that they do not understand what this means to you. There is a certain comfort in their words but they do not go far enough. There is a depth within you that they cannot reach, and your sorrow lies in that unreachable depth; there is a secret chamber within your heart that the most intimate of your friends cannot enter, and it is in that very chamber that this sorrow of yours has taken up its abode. Can there be any blessedness for you? Yes, for the Lord Himself has said, "Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted." And He will make good His own word, even to you. Your sorrow has made more room for Him in your life than ever there has been before; it has made you feel your need of Him as you never felt it before. He has never been far away from you. He is at your side now. He is waiting for you to admit Him into that secret chamber where your grief holds its sway. He would enter there that He might fill it with His own peace, the peace of His presence. He is the great Comforter, and He is this because He fully understands. Nobody else does. Your heart knows its own bitterness, and there are times when your best friends seem complete strangers to you, so little do they understand you and enter into your feelings, but it is not so with Him. He knows you through and through, He understands, and because He understands and knows all you are passing through, He can sympathize.

Our loved ones pass out of our sight, but He remains. Blessed indeed for all saints at all times to realize that He remains, but never more precious than when in the deep sorrow of bereavement — amid the break-up of earthly homes, and the wreck of earthly hopes — we can look up into His face and say, "Thou remainest." And as He looks down into our stricken hearts, with infinite compassion, He answers back, "I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee."

What a comfort lies here for all about whom the storms of trouble sweep! The Lord is with them, and every sorrow may be laid at His feet and every difficulty told to Him. That life which appears to have the least sorrow has its difficulties and burdens, and none of us have sufficient wisdom or strength to deal with these. But He is sufficient for little trials and for big, and so precious are we to Him that He will never abandon us. Only let it be realized that the grace of God brought Him down to us, not only to save us, but to abide with us, and that He is ever by our side to support and succour us and to sympathize with us, and it will change the aspect of every sorrow and produce the song where the sigh has been. It is the realization of His presence that can lead the saint of God to say, "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil for THOU ART WITH ME: Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me" (Ps. 23). And if "He has said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee," we may boldly say, "The Lord is my helper, and I will not fear what man shall do to me" (Heb. 13:5-6).

It may be remarked, in conclusion, that the Lord Jesus remedied the fear of His poor disciples by coming into their midst, and associating Himself with them in all their circumstances. It was not so much a question of actual deliverance from the matter that caused the fear, but rather raising their souls above it by fellowship with Himself. They forgot the Jews, they forgot their fear, they forgot everything, because their souls were occupied with their risen Lord. The Lord's way is often to leave His people in trial and to be with them therein. Paul might desire to get rid of the thorn, but the answer was, "My grace is sufficient for thee." It is a far richer mercy to have the grace and presence of Jesus in the trial, than to be delivered from it. The Lord allowed Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego to be cast into the furnace; but, if He did, He came down and walked with them therein. This was infinitely more gracious of Him, and more honourable to them, than if He had interposed on their behalf before they were cast in.

It matters not where the worshipper is, — on a dreary shore; in a noisome dungeon; amidst the filth and ferocity of brutal savages, or the frivolity and atheism of hollow-hearted worldlings; surrounded by the whirr and clash and roaring dissonance of the heaving factory, or toiling in the depths of the lamp-lit mine, — the man of prayer need never feel the withering pangs of loneliness. Wherever you are the Lord is there, and it only needs prayer to bring Himself and you together. Recollect Him, and He is beside your path; resort to Him and He lays His hand upon you.

It need hardly be said that for us the withdrawal is on our side, and that if joy and spiritual food and power fail, we are straitened in ourselves alone. God does not hide Himself, the Spirit is not grieved away, but the barrenness and loneliness of soul are just as real as though it were so. Thanks to His grace, the presence of the Spirit with us is a pledge of our recovery to the joy of the Lord.

A dark mystery seems to attach to the dealings of God with you. Things are not as in days past when His candle lit up your darkness and His sun shone on your path. You then prayed and were heard. You felt that you had abundance of help and sympathy from on high. Your sky was clear and your song triumphant. But now clouds, darkness, difficulty, sorrow, helplessness surround you, and your heart is crushed. And the sore experience continues. Did it last but a night and then be followed in the morning by joy and deliverance, you could bear it; but that deliverance comes not, and the one thing that makes life, for the man of faith, worth living—the realized, conscious help and smile and favour of God—are still withheld. If His loving-kindness be better than life, the lack of it is worse than death. “True, indeed,” you say. Hence you think that your way is hid from the Lord and your judgment passed over by God!

Then why am I thus? Why this tide of sorrow, loss, bereavement, misery? The question may be unanswerable, at least by man; nor is he, in his limitations, able to assuage your sorrow, or to relieve you of your load; but how, oh how can your way be hidden from Him to whom all things are naked and opened, and who knows your down-sitting and your uprising, and who numbers the very hairs of your head?

They wondered, as we sometimes wonder, why it is that the Lord allows distressful sorrow and crushing bereavement; why He does not come in and deliver. We go to the Lord, and it seems as though He neither heeds nor hears.

And then, as our minds travel back over this history of persecution, let us remember another fact, which at first sight seems so mysterious — there was no intervention of God. The tortures, the martyrdoms, the massacres, went on unceasingly, and God did not intervene. The world, the flesh and the Devil seemed to have it all their own way, and God, apparently took no notice. The agonising cries of God's tortured people went up to heaven, but the heavens were silent. Their hands were uplifted in prayer, but no deliverance came.