Psalm 127:2 It is vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the bread of sorrows: for so he gives his beloved sleep. Labour is the law of life, and to this law nothing in God's Word is opposed. "Man goeth forth unto his work and to his labour until the evening" is a description good for all time. "Active in business," if we may believe St. Paul, is a truly Christian habit. But the question is, What form ought this activity to take? Work may be done in two moods or tempers, as is hinted in the text: it may be done in spite of God, or it may be done through Him; it may be done in a spirit that regards Him not, or it may be done in a spirit which leans upon Him. In the first case, the bread of toil is not secured at all, or when secured is verily "the bread of carefulness," anxiety, disappointment. In the other ease the bread of toil is not "the bread of carefulness" or anxiety, but the bread of peace. God gives it to His beloved in their rest. I. THE BEST RESULTS OF ANY THOUGHT OR ANY EFFORT OF OURS ARE REACHED UNCONSCIOUSLY. Sir Isaac Newton, lying on his back in an orchard, and gaining a perception of the great law of gravitation from the sight of a falling apple, is a familiar type of the principle I am describing. Yet it offers no premium to idleness! The watchful calculations have been made; the inevitable reasonings have been faithfully traversed, but at last the result, the reward, the "bread" of all has dropped, as it were, upon the faithful worker out of heaven. You have heard, perhaps, of the great musical composer who always slept with a pencil and paper within reach, that at the very moment of waking be might register the inspirations of harmony that had visited him in his slumbers? And many of us, who are neither musicians nor philosophers, have had experience of the very same thing. We have gone to bed perplexed with tangled reasonings, embarrassed with ill-marshalled cogitations; we have looked away from them all, and committed ourselves and our thoughts to God; and lo! we have risen in the morning to a clear perception or an unquestioning resolution. It was in vain that we delayed taking rest to eat the bread of carefulness. God has given it to His beloved in their sleep! II. IN, THROUGH, AND YET BEYOND THEIR LABOURS, GOD GIVES TO HIS OWN PEOPLE THE ASSURANCE OF PEACE — a peace which, while it may be manifested in the success of their plans, is not overthrown by the failure of them. To those who know of a surety that the "never-failing providence" of a Father "ordereth all things both in heaven and earth," the desire becomes an assurance that things "profitable" shall be all given, and things "hurtful" put away. III. OF ALL GOD'S GIFTS THE HIGHEST AND BEST IS PEACE. If we take the text according to the common reading, we do no violence to the word "sleep" by interpreting it as spiritual restfulness. If we read it as declaring the condition under which God's people have their bread given them, we are near the same truth. If God feeds His own as they sleep or rest in Him, then that sleep or rest, whether as given or as used, may be regarded as hallowed of God, as even appropriated by Him to be the channel or vehicle of His benedictions to the soul. "The fruit of righteousness is peace," and in the fruit have we, as wrought up and comprehended, the gifts of earth and heaven, the fatness of the soil and the warmth of the sunlight, the soft showers of the morning and the dews of the eneningtide. So does this Divine peace, which "passeth all understanding," alike in its source, channels, and influences, carry to the spiritual life of the Christian the highest evidence of the near presence of God. (A. S. Thompson, B. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: It is vain for you to rise up early, to sit up late, to eat the bread of sorrows: for so he giveth his beloved sleep. |
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