Nov 12
24
CHRIST EVER THE SAME Palms of Elim John MacDuff,1879
“This is the resting place, let the weary rest; and this is the place of repose”—”Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” Hebrews 13:8
We may well sit under this shadow of the Beloved with great delight. Human life, outwardly, inwardly, is a “shifting spectacle;” so says the apostle of it. He compares it to the moving scenes or characters in the old Grecian theater—”the fashion” (or the drama) “of this world passes away.” Over the “yesterday” of the past, and the “today” of the present, the clouds of heaven are chasing one another. The waves of its seething, restless sea, are tossing and tumbling in fretful disquietude. And whether these changes have been from prosperity to adversity, or adversity to prosperity; converting life, with some, into a golden bridge, with others, into “a bridge of sighs,” they both lead to the one final goal. The path of sorrow as well as the path of glory “leads but to the grave.”
Believer, amid the fitfulness and uncertainty of earth and earthly things, come and seat yourself under this verdant Palm of a Savior’s unchanging faithfulness. “Trust not in man, who cannot save.” It may be, that some who read these pages may have had, or may be even now having, painful personal proof of that change and uncertainty, that fading and fleeting. You may have felt by experience, how often those joys, which like the bright berries in the summer woods are beautiful to the eye, prove bitter to the taste; how often the loveliest cloud in the life-sky condenses at last into a shower and then falls; how the loveliest rainbow-hue dissolves; how riches take to themselves wings and fly away; capricious fortune forsaking, often just when the golden dream seems most surely realized!
But “HE has said, I will never leave you nor forsake you.” Have you never observed, that while, in the course of a long succession of years, the scenery on a river’s bank may be changed, the river itself remains the same? Formerly it was accustomed, it may be, to flow through secluded woods—its waters, murmuring by forest glades, where the wild deer stole down in the silent eve undisturbed by human step. Now hives of industry are lining its course. Ponderous wheels are revolving and the clang of hammers are resounding, where the woodman’s axe alone was heard a short while ago. But the river itself, unchanged and unchangeable, carries its unfailing tributary-torrent to the main.
So it is with Him who, as “the River of God which is full of water,” rolls its own glorious volume of everlasting love. “There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy place where the Most High dwells. God is within her, she will not fall!” “Behold,” says the same Immutable One, in another metaphor, “I have engraved you on the palms of My hands.” Not on the mountains, colossal as they are, for they shall depart; on no leaf of Nature’s vast volume, for the last fires shall scorch them; not on blazing sun, for he shall grow dim with age; or on glorious heavens, for they shall be folded together as a scroll. But on the hand which made the worlds, the hand which was transfixed on Calvary, the hand of might and love—I have engraved you there. No corroding power can erase the writing, obliterate the name—you are Mine now, and Mine forever!
The travelers come and go in the desert—the canvas tent erected today, is down tomorrow, but the sheltering palms remain. The great Apostle speaks of ‘tribulation’—’distress’—’persecution’—’famine,’ and other adverse forces as so many waves dashing against The Rock—trying to “separate”—gathering their united strength to sweep from the secure shelter. But in vain. They are beaten back in succession with Faith’s challenge—the reproof, not of bold arrogant presumption, but of lowly believing confidence and heavenly trust—”In the name of a Mightier, we bid defiance to your might!” ‘Who shall separate us?’ “I stand upon a Rock,” says Chrysostom, “let the sea rage, the Rock cannot be disturbed.”
Bereaved Christian, you who have been called more specially to experience the sorrows of life; how comforting to know that there is One Prop that cannot give way, One Friend beyond the reach of change, who is working out your soul’s everlasting well-being in His own calm world, far above and beyond the heavings and convulsions of ours. One who is the same in storm and sunshine, births and deaths, marriage bells and funeral knells: of whom you can say, amid the wreck of all human confidences, “They shall perish, but You shall endure!”
“This same Jesus!” Oh how sweetly Fall those words upon the ear,
Like a swell of far-off music In a night-watch still and drear.
“He who spoke as none had spoken, Angel wisdom far above,
All forgiving, ne’er upbraiding, Full of tenderness and love.
“For this word, O Lord, we bless Thee, Bless our Master’s changeless name;
‘Yesterday, today, forever, Jesus Christ is still the same.’”
“Trust in the Lord forever, for the Lord, the Lord, is the Rock eternal.”