1 Samuel 4:3 And when the people were come into the camp, the elders of Israel said, Why has the LORD smitten us to day before the Philistines?… Once an old Scotch woman was on board a steamship crossing the Atlantic. She was terribly afraid of storm and wreck. One day the wind and storm began to rise. Immediately she besieged the captain of the steamer with anxious questionings as to danger. At last the captain solemnly said, "Well, madam, I think we shall have to trust in the Lord." "Oh," cried the old lady, "has it come to that?" Such is a by no means uncommon tendency — to push away recognition of dependence upon God to the time of some great and squeezing crisis, and to refuse to remember that in the common calm of every day we are as much and as really dependent upon God. That is not true faith that grasps at God only in a crisis. Parallel Verses KJV: And when the people were come into the camp, the elders of Israel said, Wherefore hath the LORD smitten us to day before the Philistines? Let us fetch the ark of the covenant of the LORD out of Shiloh unto us, that, when it cometh among us, it may save us out of the hand of our enemies. |
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