Isaiah 38:14 Like a crane or a swallow, so did I chatter: I did mourn as a dove: my eyes fail with looking upward: O LORD, I am oppressed… Jehovah, I am hard pressed; be Surety for me (Cheyne). Life has its shadow as well as its sunshine; and in our depressed times we fancy that the shadow almost blots out the shine. There is a poem which, with the touch of genius, pictures the shadow that, since the failure of our race-parents in Eden, lies close against everything for man. Go where he may, do what he will, man cannot get away from his shadow. It tracks his feet. This side or that it is found, whichever way he may stand to the light. It lies down with him; it rises with him; it goes forth with him; it comes back with him; until he even gets to fear it, and, seeing it flung everywhere, says, "Life is dark, and life is hard." This sentence of the text is an utterance of genuine feeling. It is Old Testament feeling rather than Christian feeling; but the poetical form of it gives it largeness enough to cover and include the very best Christian thoughts. Hezekiah expresses what he felt when he lay on the "border-land." His idea is that death is his creditor, and pressing for immediate payment, and he calls on God to be Surety for him, and release him from the clutch of this death. Some, oppressed, cry against advancing death. Others, as Tennyson's "Mariana," cry for it, saying - "I'm aweary, I'm aweary, I would that I were dead!" Can it be profitable for us to dwell on this despairing mood of Hezekiah? Perhaps, as we meditate, the clouds may part a little, and glints of glory may break through. Our soul may take wing and fly to God, and find rest in him. I. LIFE A BURDEN It is such (1) in view of the responsibilities under which we come; it is (2) as a matter of feeling and sentiment oftentimes. No man, indeed, ever comes to use life aright until he regards it as a sacred burden. It will be heavy or light, it will crush or it will ennoble, according to the spirit in which we accept it, and deal with it. Too readily we say that life always looks bright to youth and maiden. Is it so? We could find some of the saddest poetry ever written which had been composed by the young. Every right-hearted youth loosens the home ties, stands free, and stoops to lift up his own life-burden with a great sigh of anxiety and fear. What does the man of middle age say? However brightly and bravely a man may take up his daily care, still he feels that each new child, and each lengthening year with its new claims, adds to his burden. Business life, in modern times, seems a heavier burden than it ever was - a daily bearing and struggling to win daily bread, because we, and those related to us, want so much more than bread. Ask the old men what they think of life. The very best among them will reply, "I thank God for life, but he only knows what a burden it has been to me. His grace has enabled me to carry it, but sometimes - oftentimes - it has crushed me down on my knees." Or take the faculties with which we are endowed, and the spheres in which those faculties find expression and operation. This body: what a constant care to keep it in health, and to get it fed, clothed, and wisely ruled! And sometimes it lies like a heavy log upon our souls, and from under it we can scarcely get our breath! This mind. The infinite realms of knowledge stretch out on either side, and it is our agony that life will only let us touch, with a passing foot, the mere skirts and edges of one or two of them. The soul - our very selves - what a prison-house for us this body is! Wherever we go we must carry the body. Our souls can "neither fly nor go. Quaintly, but effectively, our fathers drew an emblem. The skeleton was represented as the cage within which the living man was imprisoned. At some time in our lives we all have thanked God for the Book of Ecclesiastes, which is precisely this - a man who felt life as a burden, letting his heart out. But turn to consider - II. GOD IS THE ONLY TRUE BURDEN-BEARER. If the three words, Undertake for me," could be put into a Christian form of speech, they would be found to express that "full surrender," that "perfect submission," that "rest of faith," which is the secret of the "higher life," the true beginning and proper foundation of Scripture holiness. But, practically, how can the man who feels life to be a burden commit that burden to the Lord? It' you do not believe in a living God, in the living Christ-God, actually present, ruling and overruling, you will never find out how. If God is away in the heavens, and Christ back in the centuries, our text has no real meaning; it is a vague sentiment. But if God is here, and Christ is with us - in us; if the Father does see in secret, and the Son abide with us always; - then it will be easy to unfold the secret of the rolled burden. One idea at least we can give. If we have a heart-sorrow we can relieve it by making a confidant. Robert Alfred Vaughan had long been ill, but one morning his wife saw signs which struck her with hopelessness. In her grief she thought of going to unbosom her trouble to her friend Mrs. George Dawson. Ere she could leave her house, that friend came in, she had come to open a new sorrow to her friend - her only girl had been seized with fits of a kind which put in peril intellect and life. Those women lifted each others' burdens by opening them in the confidences of friendship. We lose our burdens by freely telling God all about them. There is another way of rolling burdens on God, which is less easy to put into words - which is a matter of soul-feeling. We can give up the self-management of our lives. It can become a conscious ruling thought with us that we live, not for self, but for God; we can inwardly realize that God takes our life-rule into his hands; we go where he sends, we do what he bids. Come to the simplicities of life. How does a wearied child roll his burden on his mother? How does the husband lighten his life-care by rolling it upon a loving wife? Verily, the little things of man will help us to understand the great things of God. - R.T. Parallel Verses KJV: Like a crane or a swallow, so did I chatter: I did mourn as a dove: mine eyes fail with looking upward: O LORD, I am oppressed; undertake for me. |
    |