Satisfaction!

(Philpot, "Daily Words for Zion's Wayfarers", 1893)

"I will satisfy her poor with bread." Psalm 132:15

What a sweetness there is in the word "satisfy!"

The world cannot satisfy the child of God. Have
we not tried, some of us perhaps for many years,
to get some satisfaction from it?

But can wife or husband satisfy us?
Can children or relatives satisfy us?
Can all the world calls good or great, satisfy us?
Can the pleasures of sin satisfy us?

Is there not in all—an aching void? Do we not reap
dissatisfaction and disappointment from everything
that is of the creature, and of the flesh? Do we not
find that there is little else but sorrow to be reaped
from everything in this world? There is little else to
be gathered from the world but . . .
  disappointment,
  dissatisfaction, and
  "vanity and vexation of spirit."

The poor soul looks round upon the world and the
creature, upon all the occupations, amusements
and relations of life—and finds all one melancholy
harvest; so that all it reaps is sorrow, perplexity,
and dissatisfaction.

Now when a man is brought here, to desire satisfaction,
something to make him happy, something to fill up the
aching void, something to bind up broken bones, bleeding
wounds, and leprous sores—and after he has looked at
everything—at doctrines, opinions, notions, speculations,
forms, rites and ceremonies in religion; at the world with
all its charms, and at self with all its varied workings—and
found nothing but bitterness of spirit, vexation and trouble
in them all, and thus sinks down a miserable wretch; why,
then when the Lord opens up to him something of the bread
of life, he finds a satisfaction in that which he never could
gain from any other quarter.

And that is the reason why the Lord so afflicts His people;
why some carry about with them such weak, suffering
bodies; why some have so many family troubles; why
others are so deeply steeped in poverty; why others have
such rebellious children; and why others are so exercised
with spiritual sorrows, that they scarcely know what will
be the end.

It is all for one purpose—to make them miserable out
of Christ, dissatisfied except with gospel food; to render
them so wretched and uncomfortable—that God alone can
make them happy, and alone can speak consolation to
their troubled minds.