Lamentations 3:48

"Handfuls of Purpose"

For All Gleaners

"Mine eye runneth down with rivers of water for the destruction of the daughter of my people." Lamentations 3:48 .

Thus the prophet does not live for himself, he lives the larger life of philanthropy and sympathy. There are men who separate themselves from the race and think of themselves only in their petty individualism; so long as they are personally comfortable they ignore the misery of society. No Christian man should reason in this way, for such reasoning has not in it one spark of the pity of Christ. We are to look upon ourselves as brethren, as put in trust with a common citizenship, and as bearing one another's burdens as well as sharing one another's joys. He is not a Christian man who is not moved towards joy by the laughter of childhood, and who is not depressed by the moan of human woe. When a man has bread, and another man is in want of bread, he is bound to give what he has, because the bread is not his only, it belongs to mankind. Christianity above all things seeks to dispel and utterly drive away all selfishness. We are to have all things in common in a larger than a merely mechanical sense. The strong man is to feel that his strength belongs to the weak; the rich man is to know that he is the trustee of the poor; the wise man is to know that he holds his wisdom as an open treasure on which those who are in need of wisdom can freely draw. Probably we cannot realise the whole ideal in all its detail: we must not however degrade the ideal to our capacity, but strenuously endeavour to enlarge our capacity so as to include the ideal. There are those who take a hopeful view of the world simply because they take care to walk in flowery places: they take a golden path through the world and only go abroad when the sun is shining and the birds are singing; then they exclaim, What a lovely world it is and how foolish are they who seek to darken a place made glorious by its Maker! If they would go out at other times and take other paths, how much would their view be changed, and how greatly would their tone be transformed! The prophet wept over a process which he describes as "destruction": now this word does not always imply what is meant by violence or wreckage or visible ruin: there is another destruction a destruction of bloom, of fine feeling, of tender sensitiveness, of will power; a destruction of old ideals, and an overthrow of early conceptions of prayer and worship, of love and sacrifice. The more truly spiritual we are, the more penetrating will be our judgment of the processes of destruction. There was a time when we could only see trees that were uptorn, walls that were thrown down, towers that were dismantled: but now, being led by the Spirit, being daily taught by the Holy Ghost, we see that many a tree that is apparently rooted in the ground is perishing for lack of knowledge; many a wall that is apparently standing upright on its foundation is beginning to moulder at the top; and many a tower that seems to be as lofty as ever is giving way at the base and may any night be thrown down by some sharp blast of wind. It is not enough therefore from a Christian standpoint to take rough views of life, and to make hurried and general summaries of human experience: the Holy Spirit is in us as a spirit of penetration and discrimination, insisting upon fine and often exhaustive analyses: we are to be in our degree as is the word of the living God itself, sharp and powerful, keener than any two-edged sword, piercing to the dividing asunder of the joints and marrow. Christianity is not distinguished by its rough judgments, but by its fine analyses. Christianity does not deal with promiscuous conduct, with all its common and obvious issues; it deals with life, thought, purpose, with the very intents of the heart.