Psalms 55:19

Psalms 55:19

No changes! We must not take the expression in a hard and narrow literal sense, or it would be true of no man. The changes of which the Psalmist speaks mean changes that disturb, changes that unhinge all plans and arrangements, changes that frustrate hopes, changes that, like earthquakes, upheave, when least expected, fair fields and smiling villages. These are the changes which some men have not, and because they have them not they fear not God.

I. It is a melancholy fact that the general tendency of prosperity is to produce self-confidence and forgetfulness of God. When the hand is full, and the purse is full, and the heart has all it can wish, what danger there is lest men should forget God!

II. Even health can be a peril. It can be a source of temptation. It can stimulate men to sin. The best work and the most work is not done by the strongest men and women in the world, especially the work which is of a moral and spiritual kind.

III. The absence of change produces hardness of nature. No man can understand the sorrows, and therefore no man can truly succour the sorrows, of others who is perpetually preserved from having sorrows of his own.

IV. The absence of change produces neglect of eternity. "Soul, take thine ease," is a very common feeling among those whose circumstances are on the whole fairly pleasant. They have no desire to see God, no desire to be with God. Let them be without changes, and they do not feel that God is essential to them at all, and they do not fear Him.

V. All the changes of this life which unsettle us, derange our schemes, and destroy our pleasures are meant to appeal to us and to remind us that "here we have no continuing city," that this is not our rest. That is a glorious moment when the soul can say, and feel as well as say, "Here we have no continuing city, but we seek one to come."

E. Mellor, The Hem of Christ's Garment,p. 311.

References: Psalms 55:19. Homiletic Magazine,vol. xiii., p. 327; Preacher's Monthly,vol. iv., p. 249; J. Martineau, Hours of Thought,vol. i., p. 127.