“IF A MAN LOVE ME, HE WILL KEEP MY WORDS; AND MY FATHER WILL LOVE HIM, AND WE WILL COME UNTO HIM, AND MAKE OUR ABODE WITH HIM.”
11th Day.
“Remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how He said”—
“I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you.”—John xiv. 18.
The Befriended Orphans.
Does the Christian’s path lie all the way through Beulah? Nay, he is forewarned it is to be one of “much tribulation.” He has his Marahs as well as his Elims—his valleys of Baca as well as his grapes of Eschol. Often is he left unbefriended to bear the brunt of the storm—his gourds fading when most needed—his sun going down while it is yet day—his happy home and happy heart darkened in a moment with sorrows with which a stranger (with which often a brother) cannot intermeddle. There is One Brother “born for adversity,” who can. How often has that voice broken with its silvery accents the muffled stillness of the sick-chamber or death-chamber! “‘I will not leave you comfortless:’ the world may, friends may, the desolations of bereavement and death may; but I will not; you will be alone, yet not alone, for I your Saviour and your God will be with you!”
Jesus seems to have an especial love and affection for His orphaned and comfortless people. A father loves his sick and sorrowing child most; of all his household, he occupies most of his thoughts. Christ seems to delight to lavish His deepest sympathy on “him that hath no helper.” It is in the hour of sorrow His people have found Him most precious; it is in “the wilderness” He speaks most “comfortably unto them;” He gives them “their vineyards from thence:” in the places they least expected, wells of heavenly consolation break forth at their feet. As Jonathan of old, when faint and weary, had his strength revived by the honey he found dropping in the tangled thicket: so the faint and woe-worn children of God find “honey in the wood”—everlasting consolation dropping from the tree of life, in the midst of the thorniest thickets of affliction.