Evening
Time: 4:21 PM PST
"I know their sorrows." --Exodus 3:7
The child is cheered as he sings, "This my father knows"; and shall not we be
comforted as we discern that our dear Friend and tender soul-husband knows all
about us?
1. He is the Physician, and if He knows all, there is no need that the
patient should know. Hush, thou silly, fluttering heart, prying, peeping, and
suspecting! What thou knowest not now, thou shalt know hereafter, and meanwhile
Jesus, the beloved Physician, knows thy soul in adversities. Why need the
patient analyze all the medicine, or estimate all the symptoms? This is the
Physician's work, not mine; it is my business to trust, and His to prescribe. If
He shall write His prescription in uncouth characters which I cannot read, I
will not be uneasy on that account, but rely upon His unfailing skill to make
all plain in the result, however mysterious in the working.
2. He is the Master, and His knowledge is to serve us instead of our
own; we are to obey, not to judge: "The servant knoweth not what his lord
doeth." Shall the architect explain his plans to every hodman on the works? If
he knows his own intent, is it not enough? The vessel on the wheel cannot guess
to what pattern it shall be conformed, but if the potter understands his art,
what matters the ignorance of the clay? My Lord must not be cross-questioned any
more by one so ignorant as I am.
3. He is the Head. All understanding centres there. What judgment has
the arm? What comprehension has the foot? All the power to know lies in the
head. Why should the member have a brain of its own when the head fulfils for it
every intellectual office? Here, then, must the believer rest his comfort in
sickness, not that he himself can see the end, but that Jesus knows all. Sweet
Lord, be thou for ever eye, and soul, and head for us, and let us be content to
know only what Thou choosest to reveal.