Expositions of Holy Scripture: PsalmsMaclaren, Alexander
Religion
Expositions of Holy Scripture: Psalms
Maclaren, Alexander
Bible. Psalms -- Commentaries
bring June flowers and autumn fruits into snowy January days by the
exercise of this trust in God. It does not need that our circumstances
should alter, but only that our attitude should alter. Look up, and cast
your souls into God's hands, and all that is round you, of disasters and
difficulties and perplexities, will suffer transformation; and for
sorrow there will come joy because there has come trust.
I need not say a word about the other application of this verse, which,
as I have said, is consecrated to us by our Lord's own use of it at the
last. But is it not beautiful to think that the very same act of mind
and heart by which a man commits his spirit to God in life may be his
when he comes to die, and that death may become a voluntary act, and the
spirit may not be dragged out of us, reluctant, and as far as we can,
resisting, but that we may offer it up as a libation, to use one
metaphor of St. Paul's, or may surrender it willingly as an act of
faith? It is wonderful to think that life and death, so unlike each
other, may be made absolutely identical in the spirit in which they are
met. You remember how the first martyr caught up the words from the
Cross, and kneeling down outside the wall of Jerusalem, with the blood
running from the wounds that the stones had made, said, 'Lord Jesus!
receive my spirit.' That is the way to die, and that is the way to live.
One word is all that time permits about the ground upon which this great
venture of faith may be made. 'Thou hast redeemed me, Lord God of
Truth.' The Psalmist, I think, uses that word 'redeemed' here, not in
its wider spiritual New Testament sense, but in its frequent Old
Testament sense, of deliverance from temporal difficulties and
calamities. And what he says is, in effect, this: 'I have had experience
in the past which makes me believe that Thou wilt extricate me from this
trouble too, because Thou art the God of Truth.' He thinks of what God
has done, and of what God is. And Peter, whom we have already found
echoing this text, echoes that part of it too, for he says, 'Let them
commit the keeping of their souls to Him in well doing, as _unto a
faithful Creator_,' which is all but parallel to 'Lord God of Truth.' So
God will continue as He has begun, and finish what He has begun.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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