And thus will it be with the sincere followers of the Lord, to whom their crosses will prove but as so many advances to a more excellent glory, and their affliction will be the avenue to everlasting bliss and happiness. 5. The Lord continues his complaint thus: “I am gone like the shadow when it declineth: I am tossed up and down as the locust. My knees are weak through fasting; and my flesh faileth of fatness.” Ps. 109:23, 24. A most expressive description of the common frailty of human nature! What is a shadow, but a mere nothing, an empty lifeless appearance? To such an abject lowliness, to such an inconceivable degree of humiliation, the Lord suffered himself to be reduced whilst he dwelt among us! He who is life and light itself, and the bottomless fountain of life and happiness, is exposed to labor and infirmities; and should not men hereby learn so much humility at least, as to think themselves far more emphatically as shadows, or as nothing, than the Lord of life himself? At the same time, it is to be remembered that the Lord here refers to his state of humiliation alone, for, in his own glory he is our Lord and our life. He says, “I am tossed up and down as the locust.” The Lord had no settled habitation upon earth, as men of the world have. He was in a constant pilgrimage towards that kingdom which cannot be moved. For this reason he is said to have only _dwelt or tabernacled_ among us (John 1:14), and is here compared to a locust, which having no abiding place, is fearful, and tossed to and fro with every wind. Nahum 3:17; Exod. 10:19. And even in this our blessed Saviour has left us a pattern, to walk as he walked; and since we have no continuing city here, to seek one to come, which “hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God.” Heb. 11:10. What is farther added of the weakness of his knees, and the failing of his flesh, abundantly appeared about the time of his passion, when his “strength was dried up like a potsherd” (Ps. 22:15); and this may be a monitor to us under bodily diseases and infirmities. Should we complain of a fit of sickness, when the Lord of life pined away into weakness, and languished in misery? What matters it, how languid, weak, and neglected our body be, if our soul and spiritual life be but vigorous and sound? The soul ought to “eat that which is good, and delight itself in spiritual fatness” (Isa. 55:2), that so it may grow “strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might.” Ephes. 6:10.