A New Year's Meditation
J. B. Brown, B. A. Deuteronomy 8:1-2 All the commandments which I command you this day shall you observe to do, that you may live, and multiply… I. Let us emphasise the ALL, for on that word the emphasis of the sentence truly lies. Survey one part, and then not only the whole, but even that particular portion will inevitably be misunderstood. Take it all together. The very principle of it implies a wholeness, a continuity of purpose, which can only be fully comprehended in the result. It is a way somewhither. No way explains itself at every step. And believe that a Being of unerring wisdom laid the plan of your life course, the nature and conditions of your journey, and the certainty that that was the straightest way to your home. Believe that a Father's wise and loving eye has surveyed the whole of it; and that not a quagmire, not a perilous passage, not a torrent, not a mountain gorge, not a steep, rocky path, not a bare, sandy plain, has been ordained that could have been spared. Thou shalt consider all the way. Consider — 1. That it is a way. That the character of the path is to be estimated not by the present difficulty or danger, but by the importance of the end. God says to you, as you would say to every traveller along a difficult path, "Look up; leave caring for the track at thy feet; look on to the end that is already in sight." Full little cares the weary pilgrim for the roughness of the path or its peril; his heart strains on — Rome, Jerusalem, will reward it all. Is the end worth the toil? That is always the one question. 2. Consider the infinite variety of the way, the many rich elements and influences which it combines to educate your life. A dead and dreary monotony is no part of the plan of God in the education of His sons. If you want to see vast monotones, broad sand tracks, boundless plains, go to Asia and Africa, the continents of slaves and tyrants. If you want to see rich variety, hill and valley, tableland and plain, lakes, rivers, inland seas, and broken coastlines, come to Europe, the home of civilisation, the continent of freeborn and free-living men. And manifold in beauty, in variety, in alternations of scenes and experiences, is this wilderness way by which God is leading His sons. The valley, remember, is part of the mountain. If you will have the height of the one with its exhilaration, you must have the depth of the other with its depression. It is the memory of the depths that makes the heights so grand and inspiring. II. Thou shalt consider THE BEAUTY OF THE WAY. I believe the wilderness to have been only less beautiful than Canaan. In many points, if not more beautiful, more striking and grand. It was a bright contrast to the dismal monotony and fatness of Egypt. And through the forty years' journey that people had spread round them all the pomp and splendour of Nature, her grandest aspects, her most winning, witching smiles: "And thou shalt consider all the way by which the Lord thy God hath led thee." Lift up thine eyes and take in all the beauty and goodness of the world. "O Lord, how manifold are Thy works, how beautiful; in wisdom and in goodness hast Thou made them all." We none of us take half joy enough, the joy we have a right to take, in the goodly world which our God hath built. Poor we may be and struggling, and all the higher interests and joys of life, art, literature, music, may be tasted but rarely, and in drops. But the Great Artist has taken thought for the poor. He wills that their joys shall not be Song of Solomon. The beauty, the glory, which art at its highest faintly adumbrates, is theirs in profusion Thou shalt consider the good world through which the Lord thy God hath led thee. III. Thou shalt consider THE BREAD OF THE WILDERNESS (Exodus 16:11-15). This miracle of the manna is a very wonderful miracle, repeated every day before our eyes. The God who made the manna their food makes bread of corn your food. It is good sometimes to get behind all the apparatus of laws which hide the hand of the living God from us, and take our daily bread, our daily breath, as the sparrows and the lilies take their food and their beauty, direct from the hand of our Father in heaven. IV. Thou shalt remember THE PERILS OF THE WILDERNESS. It is distinctly by a perilous path God leads us, that we may see as well as dimly guess at our dependence, and ascribe our deliverances to the hand from which they spring. Life is one long peril. Physiologists say that if we could but see the delicate tissues which are strained almost to bursting by every motion, every breath, we should be afraid to stir a step or draw a breath lest we should rupture the frail vessels and perish. "Strange that a harp of thousand strings should keep in tune so long." But it does keep in tune; it is in full tune this day. Remember the perils of the way. Remember the moments of sickness and agony, when death seemed to stand over you. There are deadlier perils than death around us each moment, perils which threaten the second death. Temptations of no common strain. Some of you, by a wonderful chain of providential agencies, have been delivered from positions which you felt to be full of peril, in which, had you continued, you must have fallen; but the net was broken and you have escaped. Thou shalt remember THE SINS OF THE WILDERNESS. VI. Thou shalt remember THE CHASTISEMENTS OF THE WAY, and consider "that as a man chasteneth his son, so the Lord thy God chasteneth thee." VII. Thou shalt remember THE ELIMS OF THE WAY, the sunny spots, the living verdure, the murmuring fountains, the rustling, shadowing palms, where not seldom you have been permitted to lie down and rest. The wilderness had nooks as fertile, as beautiful as Canaan. Earth has joys, though rare, pure and deep as the joys of heaven. We are ever moaning over our sorrows. We take our mercies as a thing of course. "The people came down to Elim, where were springs and palms." I do not catch the notes of a song of praise. Remember the way and count the Elims by which it has been gladdened, the moments of rapture in which the full heart, swollen almost to bursting, has murmured out its thanksgiving, and realised that "it is a blessed thing to be." VIII. Thou shalt consider THE END OF THE WAY. Forget that, and it is all a mystery. "Be patient, brethren, and see the end of the Lord" (7-11). "The Lord doth bring thee in." Every sorrow, toil, pain, chastisement He sends is to bring thee in with joy, with glory; to make thee rich for eternity. (J. B. Brown, B. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: All the commandments which I command thee this day shall ye observe to do, that ye may live, and multiply, and go in and possess the land which the LORD sware unto your fathers. WEB: You shall observe to do all the commandment which I command you this day, that you may live, and multiply, and go in and possess the land which Yahweh swore to your fathers.