LESSONS
As yet the home of Bethany is all happiness. The
burial-ground has been untraversed since, probably, years before the dust of
one, or perhaps both parents had been committed to the sepulcher. Death had
long left the residents with an unbroken circle. Can it be that the
unwelcome intruder is so near at hand? that their now joyous dwelling is
so soon to echo to the wail of lamentation? We imagine it was but lately
visited by Jesus. In a little while the arrow has sped; the sacredness of a
divine friendship is no guarantee against the incursion of the sleepless
foe of human happiness. Bethany is a mourning household. The sisters are
bowed in the agony of their worst bereavement—the prop of their existence is
laid low—"Lazarus is dead!"
At the very threshold of this touching story, are we not
called on to pause, and read the uncertainty of earth's best joys and
purest happiness; that the brightest sunshine is often the
precursor of a dark cloud. When the gourd is all flourishing, a
worm may unseen be preying at its root! When the vessel is gliding
joyously on the calm sea, the treacherous rock may be at hand, and, in one
brief hour, it has become a shattered wreck!
It is the touching record of the inspired historian in
narrating Abraham's heaviest trial—"After these things, God tested Abraham."
After what things? After a season of rich blessings, gilding a future with
bright hopes! Would that, amid our happy homes, and sunshine hours, and
seasons of holy and joyous communion between friend and friend, we would
more habitually bear in mind "This is not to last!"
In one brief and unsuspected moment, our Lazarus
may be taken away in death. The messenger may now be on the wing to lay low
some treasured object of earthly solicitude and love. God would teach
us—while we are glad of our gourds—not to be "exceeding glad;" not to nestle
here as if we were to live always, but rather, as we are perched on our
summer boughs, to be ready at His bidding to soar away, and leave behind us
what most we prize.
It tells us, too, the utter mysteriousness of many of
the divine dispensations. "LAZARUS IS DEAD!" What! he, the head, and
support, and stay of two helpless females? The joy and solace of a common
orphan-hood—a brother evidently made and born for their adversities? What!
Lazarus, whom Jesus tenderly loved? How much, even to his Lord, will
be buried in that early grave! We may well expect, if there be one
homestead in all Palestine guarded by the overshadowing wings of angels to
debar the entrance of death, whose tenants may pillow their heads night
after night in the confident assurance of immunity from trial, it
must surely be that loved resort—that "Arbor in His Hill of
Difficulty," where the God-man delighted often to pause
and refresh His wearied body and aching mind.
Will Omnipotence not have set its mark, as of old, on the
door-posts and lintels of that consecrated dwelling, so that the destroyer,
in going his rounds elsewhere, may pass by it unscathed? How, too, can the
infant Church spare him? The aged Simeon or Anna we dare not wish to
detain. Burdened with years and infirmities, after having gotten a glimpse
of their Lord and Savior, let them depart in peace, and receive their
crowns. These decayed trees in the forest—those to whom old age on
earth is a burden—let them bow to the axe, and be transplanted to a nobler
climate. But one in the vigor of life—one so beautifully combining natural
amiability with Christian love—one who was pre-eminently the friend of
Jesus, and that word profoundly suggestive of all that was lovely in a
disciple's character. Death may visit other homes in that sequestered
village, and spread desolation in other hearts, but surely the
Church's Lord will not allow one of its pillars so prematurely to fall!
And yet it is even so! The mysterious summons has
come!—the most honored home on earth has been crudely rifled!—the most
loving of hearts have been cruelly torn; and inscrutable is the dealing, for
"Lazarus is dead!"
He, the young and strong, who cherished
Noble longings for the strife,
By the roadside fell, and perished
On the threshold march of life."
And worse, too, than all, "the Lord is absent!"
Why is Omniscience tarrying elsewhere, when His presence and power above
all, are needed at the house of His friend? The disconsolate sisters, in
wondering amazement, repeat over and over again the exclamation, "If Jesus
had been here, this our brother had not died!" "Has He forgotten to be
gracious?" "Surely our way is hidden from the Lord, our judgment is passed
over from our God."
Ah! the experience of His people is often still the same.
What are many of God's dispensations?—a baffling enigma—all
strangeness—all mystery to the eye of sense. Useless lives prolonged,
useful ones taken! The honored minister of God struck down, the unfaithful
watchman spared! The philanthropic and benevolent have an arrest put on
their manifold deeds of kindness and generosity; the grasping, the
avaricious, the mean-souled—those who neither fear God nor do good to man,
are allowed to live on from day to day! What is it but the picture here
presented eighteen hundred years ago—Judas spared to be a traitor to
his Lord; while—Lazarus is dead!
But let us be still! The Savior, indeed, does not now
lead us forth, amid the scene of our trial, as He did the bereft sisters, to
unravel the mysteries of His providence, and to show glory to God,
redounding from the darkest of His dispensations. To us, the grand sequel
is reserved for eternity. The grand development of the divine plan will
not be fully accomplished until then; faith must meanwhile rest
satisfied with what is baffling to sight and sense.
This whole narrative is designed to teach the lesson that
there is an undeveloped future in all God's dealings. There is an
unseen "why and wherefore" which cannot be answered here in this present
world. Our befitting attitude and language now is that of simple
confidingness—"Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?" Listening to
one of these Bethany sayings (we shall by and by consider), whose meaning
will be interpreted in a brighter world by Him who uttered it in the days of
His flesh—"Said I not unto you, that if you would believe, you would see the
glory of God?"
"O you who mourns on your way,
With longings for the close of day,
He walks with you, that Angel kind,
And gently whispers—'Be resigned;
Bear up—bear on—the end shall tell,
The dear Lord orders all things well.'"
Our duty, meanwhile, is that of children, simply
to trust the faithfulness of a God whose footsteps of love we often fail
to trace. All will be seen at last to have been not only for the
best, but really the best. Dark clouds will be fringed with mercy.
What we call now "baffling dispensations," will be seen to be wondrous parts
of a great connected whole—the wheel within wheel of that complex machinery,
by which "all things, (yes, ALL things) are now working together for good."
"Lazarus is dead!" The choicest tree in the
earthly Eden has succumbed to the blast. The choicest cup has been
dashed to the ground. Some great lights in the moral firmament have
been extinguished. But God can do without human agency. His Church can be
preserved, though no Moses be spared to conduct Israel over Jordan, and no
Lazarus to tell the story of his Savior's grace and love, when other
disciples have forsaken Him and fled.
We may be calling, in our blind unbelief, as we point to
some ruined fabric of earthly bliss—some tomb which has become the grave of
our fondest affections and dearest hopes—"Shall the dust praise you, shall
it declare your truth?" Believe! believe! God will not give us back our dead
as He did to the Bethany sisters; but He will not deprive us of anything we
have, or allow one garnered treasure to be removed, except for His own
glory and our good. Now it is our privilege to believe it—in
Heaven we shall see it. Before the sapphire throne we shall see that
not one unnecessary thorn has been suffered to pierce our feet, or
one needless sorrow to visit our dwelling, or tear to dim our
eye. Then our acknowledgment will be, "We have known and believed the love
which God has to us."
"Oh, weep not though the beautiful decay,
Your heart must have its autumn—its pale skies
Leading perhaps to winter's cold dismay.
Yet doubt not. Beauty does not pass away;
His form departs not, though his body dies.
Secure beneath the earth the snowdrop lies,
Waiting the spring's young resurrection-day."
Be it ours to have Jesus with us, and Jesus for
us, in all our afflictions. If we wish to insure these mighty solaces, we
must not suffer the hour of sorrow and bereavement to overtake us with a
Savior until then a stranger and unknown. Luke tells us the secret of Mary's
faith and composure at her loved one's grave—She had, long before her day of
trial, learned to sit at her Redeemer's feet. It was when in health Jesus
was first resorted to and loved. In prosperity may our homes and hearts be
gladdened with His footstep; and when prosperity is withdrawn, and is
succeeded by the dark and cloudy day, may we know, like Martha and Mary,
where to rush in our seasons of bitter sorrow; listening from His glorified
lips on the throne to those same exalted themes of consolation which, for
eighteen hundred years, have to myriad, myriad mourners been like oil thrown
on the troubled sea. Jesus is with us! The Master is come! His
presence will extract sorrow from the bitterest cup, and make, as He did at
Bethany, a very home of bereavement and a burial scene, to be a hallowed
ground!