that he bestows his very being for the daily food of his creatures. He
who loves the glory of God will be very jealous of any word that would
enhance his greatness by representing him incapable of suffering. Verily
God has taken and will ever take and endure his share, his largest share
of that suffering in and through which the whole creation groans for the
sonship.
Follows at once the equally wonderful story of his walking on the sea to
the help of his disciples. After the former miracle, the multitude would
have taken him by force to make him their king. Any kind of honour they
would readily give him except that obedience for the truth's sake which
was all he cared for. He left them and went away into a mountain alone
to pray to his Father. Likely he was weary in body, and also worn in
spirit for lack of that finer sympathy which his disciples could not
give him being very earthly yet. He who loves his fellows and labours
among those who can ill understand him will best know what this
weariness of our Lord must have been like. He had to endure the
world-pressure of surrounding humanity in all its ungodlike phases. Hence
even he, the everlasting Son of the Father, found it needful to retire
for silence and room and comfort into solitary places. There his senses
would be free, and his soul could the better commune with the Father.
The mountain-top was his chamber, the solitude around him its closed
door, the evening sky over his head its open window. There he gathered
strength from the will of the Father for what yet remained to be done
for the world's redemption. How little could the men below, who would
have taken him by force and made him a king, understand of such
communion! Yet every one of them must go hungering and thirsting and
grasping in vain, until the door of that communion was opened for him.
They would have made him a king: he would make them poor in spirit,
mighty in aspiration, all kings and priests unto God.
But amidst his prayer, amidst the eternal calm of his rapturous
communion, he saw his disciples thwarted by a wind stronger than all
their rowing: he descended the hill and walked forth on the water to
their help.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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