Psalms 121:3

Psalms 121:3

There are times of every man's life, moods of every man's mind, in which nothing is more acceptable than the remembrance of some of those fundamental truths of religion from which we often turn aside as elementary or commonplace. Such a truth, so certain, so fundamental, so comforting, is that of the never-failing providence of God, a truth, or rather a fact, which has been the unceasing support of all God's servants in every age, and on the belief of which depend all our happiness in life, all our hope in danger and difficulty, all our strength and consolation in times of suffering and distress.

I. The providence of God must be either minute and universal or nominal and nugatory. If God does anything, He must do all things. The very greatness of God, the difference between Him and His creatures in point of knowledge and power, is shown in nothing more infallibly than in this, that He is able to combine universal dominion with particular superintendence, the irresistible control of empires and of worlds with the most minute direction of individual interests, the tenderest concern for individual feeling. What then does this teach us? How shall we avail ourselves of the truth thus disclosed?

II. Let each one say to himself it is not the language of self-exaltation God careth for me. The Lord thinketh upon me. I am of value in the sight of God, not for what I am without Him, but for that of which He has made me capable, and for the sake of Him who bought me with His most precious blood. It was not by chance, but by the will and operation of God, that the time, and the place, and the circumstances of my being were all ordained.

III. Recollect that from the watchful eye of that Providence which orders all things we cannot escape if we would. Either in love and tender compassion, or else (according to the fearful words of the prophet) with fury poured out, God mustrule over us. It is not a matter of choice whether we will be under Him or whether we will be our own masters. His we are. "Whither shall I go then from Thy Spirit, or whither shall I go then from Thy presence?"

C. J. Vaughan, Harrow Sermons,2nd series, p. 164.