"Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus."
"Not my will, but Yours be done."—Luke 22:42.
Where was there ever resignation like this? The life of
Jesus was one long martyrdom. From Bethlehem's manger to Calvary's cross,
there was scarcely one break in the clouds; these gathered more darkly and
ominously around Him until they burst over His devoted head as He uttered His
expiring cry. Yet throughout this pilgrimage of sorrow no murmuring accent
escaped His lips. The most suffering of all suffering lives was one of
uncomplaining submission.
"Not my will, but Yours will," was the motto
of this wondrous Being! When He came into the world He thus announced His
advent, "Lo, I come, I delight to do Your will, O my God!" When He left
it, we listen to the same prayer of blended agony and acquiescence, "O my
Father, if it be possible let this cup pass from me! Nevertheless not
as I will, but as You will."
Reader! is this mind also in you? Ah, what are your
trials compared to His! What the ripples in your tide of woe, compared to the
waves and billows which swept over Him! If He, the spotless Lamb of God,
"murmured not," how can you murmur? His were the sufferings of a
bosom never once darkened with the passing shadow of guilt or sin. Your
severest sufferings are deserved, yes, infinitely less than you
deserve! Are you tempted to indulge in hard suspicions, as to God's
faithfulness and love, in appointing some peculiar trial? Ask yourself, Would
Jesus have done this? Should I seek to pry into "the deep things of
God," when He, in the spirit of a weaned child, was satisfied with the
solution, "Even so, Father, for so it seems good in Your sight?"
"Even so, Father!" Afflicted one! "tossed with
tempest, and not comforted, "take that word on which Your Lord pillowed
His suffering head, and make it, as He did, the secret of your resignation.
The sick child will take the bitterest draught from a
father's hand. "This cup which You, O God, give me to drink, shall I not
drink it?" Be it mine to lie passive in the arms of Your chastening love,
exulting in the assurance that all Your appointments, though sovereign, are
never arbitrary, but that there is a gracious "need be" in them all. "My
Father!" my covenant God! the God who spared not Jesus! It may well
hush every repining word.
Drinking deep of His sweet spirit of submission, you will
be able thus to meet, yes, even to welcome, your sorest cross, saying, "Yes,
Lord, all is well, just because it is Your blessed will. Take me, use me,
chasten me, as seems good in Your sight. My will is resolved into Yours. This
trial is dark; I cannot see the 'why and the wherefore' of it—but not my will,
but Your will!' The gourd is withered; I cannot see the reason of so speedy a
dissolution of the loved earthly shelter; sense and sight ask in vain why
these leaves of earthly refreshment have been doomed so soon to droop in
sadness and sorrow. But it is enough. "The Lord prepared the worm;"
"not my will, but Your will!"
Oh, how does the stricken soul honor God by thus being
silent in the midst of dark and perplexing dealings, recognizing in these,
part of the needed discipline and training for a sorrowless, sinless,
deathless world; regarding every trial as a link in the chain which draws it
to heaven, where the whitest robes will be found to be those here baptized
with suffering, and bathed in tears!
"Arm yourselves likewise with the same mind."