The surprising Life-Guide.
"I will bring the blind by a way that they knew not." Only the figure is taken from the gracious Divine arrangements made for the return of the captives from Babylon. That is indeed prominent in the prophet's mind, but only as illustrative of God's constant dealings as the Life-Guide of his people. Let us, in any vivid and impressive way, see God's working and providing in any one instance, and we learn what he really is, and what he really does, in all instances. Therefore is every man's life dotted over with special scenes of rescue and deliverance, when ways were made for him altogether beyond his imagination, that he might learn to say from the heart, "This God is our God for ever and ever: he will be our Guide even unto death." Matthew Arnold paraphrases the verse thus: "I will bring mY faint-hearted, incredulous, and undiscerning people safe through the desert to their own land." Prominent are two things:
The Divine guidance ensures a safe, good way through all. This may be fully opened and illustrated on the following lines.
I. WE CANNOT GRASP THE PURPOSE OF LIFE. God holds it. What arc we here for? God knows. How will our work fit into the work of others? God knows. We are only servants working at parts of a plan which has never been shown us. The Divine Architect is our Guide, and shows us just what we have to do. Men are, in a despairing spirit, asking "Is life worth living?" We answer, "Certainly it is, if only it is put into God's hands for the guiding." Perhaps we shall never reach to grasp the purpose of our life on the earth better than this—it is our becoming holy, and the agents in helping others to become holy. That is God's thought for us, and towards its realization he is ever working, ever guiding.
II. WE CANNOT MAKE A WAY OF LIFE. We plan, but life does not carry out our plan. We wish, but life will not fulfil our desires. Every one of us has to say, when life closes, "I could not have imagined the way in which! have been led." "It is not in man that walketh to direct his steps." "The future we explore in vain, so little understood." God opens it. He knows the way of life for every man. He "leads in paths that we have not known." Two striking instances may be taken, one from Old Testament and the other from New Testament Scripture. David tending his sheep could not even imagine the way of life he was to take; yet God was guiding him step by step along a way he had marked out for him. Tell Saul, the zealous Hebrew, that his way lay round from Jerusalem to Illyricum, preaching the gospel of the crucified Nazarene, and he will exclaim, "Impossible!" But, under God's guidance, it was the way that he took.
III. WE CANNOT MEET THE CLAIMS OF LIFE. God can help us. Those claims seem often as impossible for us as a command to carry sufficient water with them for all their long desert-journey would have been for those returning exiles. At times the responsibilities resting upon us seem quite overwhelming, and heart and flesh fail. Then we need to be reminded of the amazing contrast between what a man can do by himself, and what a man can do when God is with him. Wonderful becomes his "enduring" when he can "see him who is invisible." The ever-strengthening conviction, which makes spiritual giants, is that God never gives any man any work to do without holding out, ready for him, grace for the doing.
IV. WE CANNOT PROVIDE FOR THE NEEDS OF LIFE. God is the—to use an Eastern figure—Sheikh of the caravan, and he provides. What is wanted is the knowledge that anticipates all wants, and the abilities that can meet all. The various needs of life may be gathered under one head—the need of renewals, Renewals of body, by sleep; of health, by air, food, medicine; of mind, by knowledge; of heart, by love. it is nothing short of a Divine thing to arrange for all the needs of a single life—many of them needs to which the man himself is "blind," of them he knows nothing. God knows, guides, and provides.
V. WE CANNOT MASTER THE ILLS OF LIFE. God overrules. Again and again we have to face calamities in conscious helplessness. What can Job do with the ills of life? The Sabaeans carry off his flocks, and he can do nothing. Mighty winds bring the house down upon his sons and daughters, and he can do nothing. Painful diseases afflict his own body, and he can do nothing. He can master none of the ills of life. Darkness is round him; things are crooked. Yet God is the Life-Guide. Circumstances are all in his control. He overrules. He makes the very ills turn to good, by securing for Job, through them, a new and more spiritual hold of himself, and by making Job the supreme example of patience for the whole world. He brings light on the darkness, and makes the crooked things go straight. In conclusion, urge that, in view of our helplessness and God's all-sufficing helpfulness, we may well lift eyes and hearts up unto him, saying, "My Father, thou shalt be the Guide of my life."—R.T.