I am now writing in a little city made rich by vast potteries. If the dull, heavy clay on the potter’s wheel and in the fiery oven could think and speak, it would doubtless cry out against the fierce agony; but if it could foresee the purpose of the potter, and the thing of use and beauty he meant to make it, it would nestle low under his hand and rejoice in hope.
We are clay in the hand of the Divine Potter, but we can think and speak, and in some measure understand His high purpose in us. It is the work of the Holy Spirit to make us understand. And if we will not be dull and senseless and unbelieving, He will illuminate us and fill us with peaceful, joyous hope.
1. He would reveal to us that our Heavenly Potter has Himself been on the wheel and in the fiery furnace, learning obedience and being fashioned into “the Captain of our salvation” by the things which He suffered. When we are tempted and tried, and tempest-tossed, He raises our hope by showing us Jesus suffering and sympathising with us, tempted in all points as we are, and so able and wise and willing to help us in our struggle and conflict (Hebrews ii. 9-18). He assures us that Jesus, into whose hands is committed all power in Heaven and earth, is our elder Brother, “touched with the feeling of our infirmities” (Hebrews iv. 15), and He encourages us to rest in Him and not be afraid; and so we abound in hope, through His power as we believe.
2. He reveals to us the eternal purpose of God in our trials and difficulties. Listen to Paul: “All things work together for good to them that love God.” “We know this,” says Paul (Romans viii. 28). But how can this be? Ah! there is where faith must be exercised. It is “in believing” that we “abound in hope through the power of the Holy Ghost.”
God’s wisdom and ability to make all things work together for our good are not to be measured by our understanding, but to be firmly held by our faith. My child is in serious difficulty and does not know how to help himself; but I say, “Leave it to me.” He may not understand how I am to help him, but he trusts me, and rejoices in hope. We are God’s dear children, and He knows how to help us, and make all things work together for our good, if we will only commit ourselves to Him in faith.
“Thou art as much His care as if beside
Nor man nor angel lived in Heaven or earth;
Thus sunbeams pour alike their glorious tide,
To light up worlds, or wake an insect’s mirth.”
Again, afflictions overtake us, and now the Holy Spirit encourages our hope and makes it to abound by such promises as these: “Our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal” (2 Cor. iv. 17, 18). But such a promise as that only mocks us if we do not believe. “In all their affliction He was afflicted, and the angel of His presence saved them: in His love and in His pity He redeemed them; and He bare them, and He carried them all the days of old” (Isaiah lxiii. 9). And He is just the same to-day. To some He says: “I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction” (Isaiah xlviii 10), and nestling down into His will and “believing,” they “abound in hope through the power of the Holy Ghost.”
He turns our eyes back upon Job in his loss and pain; upon Joseph sold into Egyptian slavery; Daniel in the lions’ den; the three Hebrews in the burning fiery furnace, and Paul in prison and shipwreck and manifold perils; and, showing us their steadfastness and their final triumph, He prompts us to hope in God.
When weakness of body overtakes us, He encourages us with such assurances as these: “My flesh and my heart faileth; but God is the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever” (Psalm lxxiii. 26), and the words of Paul: “Though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day” (2 Cor. iv. 16).
When old age comes creeping on apace, He has promised to meet the need that our hope fail not. Listen to David! He prays: “Cast me not off in the time of old age; forsake me not when my strength faileth.... Now also when I am old and greyheaded, O God, forsake me not; until I have showed Thy strength unto this generation, and Thy power to every one that is to come” (Psalm lxxi. 9, 18). And through Isaiah the Lord replies: “Even to your old age I am He; and even to hoar hairs will I carry you: I have made, and I will bear; even I will carry, and will deliver you” (Isaiah xlvi. 4). And David cries out, “The righteous shall flourish like the palm tree: he shall grow like a cedar in Lebanon. Those that be planted in the house of the Lord shall flourish in the courts of our God. They shall still bring forth fruit in old age; they shall be fat and flourishing, to show that the Lord is upright” (Psalm xcii. 12-15).