As I have pointed out already, the thought conveyed to the prophet by
this vision was not only the general one, of God's sovereign rule, but
the special one of His rule over and for, and His protection of, the
orphan kingdom which had lost its king. The vision took the special
shape that the moment required. It was because the earthly king was
dead that the living, heavenly King was revealed.
So there is just suggested by it this general thought, that the
consciousness of God's presence and work for us takes in each heart the
precise shape that its momentary necessities and circumstances require.
That infinite fulness is of such a nature as that it will assume any
form for which the weakness and the need of the dependent creature
call. Like the one force which scientists now are beginning to think
underlies all the various manifestations of energy in nature, whether
they be named light, heat, motion, electricity, chemical action, or
gravitation, the one same vision of the throned God, manifest in Jesus
Christ, is protean. Here it flames as light, there burns as heat, there
flashes as electricity; here as gravitation holds the atoms together,
there as chemical energy separated and decomposes them; here results in
motion, there in rest; but is the one force. And so the one God will
become everything and anything that every man, and each man, requires.
He shapes himself according to our need. The water of life does not
disdain to take the form imposed upon it by the vessel into which it is
poured. The Jews used to say that the manna in the wilderness tasted to
each man as each man desired. And the God, who comes to us all, comes
to us each in the shape that we need; just as He came to Isaiah in the
manifestation of His _kingly_ power, because the throne of Judah was
vacated.
So when our hearts are sore with loss, the New Testament Manifestation
of the King, even Jesus Christ, comes to us and says, 'The same is my
mother and sister and brother,' and His sweet love compensates for the
love that can die, and that has died. When losses come to us He draws
near, as durable riches and righteousness. In all our pains He is our
anodyne, and in all our griefs He brings the comfort; He is all in all,
and each withdrawn gift is compensated, or will be compensated, to each
in Him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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