XXXVI
DIVINE VISITATIONS
"Thou knowest not the time of thy visitation."--Luke xix. 44.
GOD visits us in opportunity. The dawn of opportunity is the unveiling of His presence. When the door opens upon the way of sacrifice and enlargement, He is there! No longer does He visit us in bodily form; He comes in the form of circumstance. He speaks to us in the voice of events. We may behold His comings and goings in the movements of our day. We may see Him in a tendency, we may hear Him in a challenge, we may find Him in the midst of upheaval and unrest. He comes to us in the brightness of some glorious hope, being "clothed with light as with a garment"; and he comes to us in the shadow of some chilling disappointment, visiting us "in the night seasons."
It is therefore a fine attainment in grace to be able so to interpret events as to discern the presence of the Lord. We are advancing in the school of the Spirit when we know the time of His visitation, when we can look upon the robe of light or the pale of darkness, and say, "It is the Lord!" But when events have no divine significance, when they are empty as a drum, life becomes a very hollow procession--indeed, it is scarcely a procession at all, but just a disorderly assemblage of blind and warring instincts, rushing out of the night and into the night again.
To recognise the divine visitation, and to discern the Visitor! To know Him as He comes to the door! "Behold, I stand at the door and knock." How may we know His knock? "He that hath ears to hear, let him hear." "With what measure ye hear it shall be measured to you again." We need the consecrated ear, and the ear is sanctified in the consecrated heart. When the heart is sanctified all the senses are awake to the presence of the Lord. "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God."
SELF-POSSESSION
"In your patience ye shall possess your souls."--Luke xxi. 19.
To possess one's soul is an infinitely grander thing than to possess some magnificent estate. There is many a man who owns thousands of broad acres who has never owned the fair realm of his own soul. Ask him for an inventory of his estate, and he will produce one recording the contents of every nook and corner in his wide domain. Ask him for an inventory of his soul! Ask him what sacred powers he has in the world within, and what control he has of them, and whether there is peace and harmony in that mysterious Kingdom! He can record his wealth in personality; ask him what treasures he has in personality! In what measure does he possess his own soul? There is something grimly ironical in a man owning many things and yet not owning himself. He has gained the world; he has never gained his own soul.
Now the secret of self-possession is to be found in Christ. It is through Him that we discover our souls. We find ourselves in finding Him. Our wealth of being is unveiled to us in the measure in which we enter into the revelation of His glory. Our endowments troop out at the call of His communion. The deeper our communion the wealthier is the response. The finer the climate the more luxurious is the growth. We never know how much there is in us until we are discovering how much there is in Christ. Our powers remain like sleeping seeds until "the heavenly air is breathing round."
We do not come into these possessions in a day. The title-deeds may be ours in a moment. They become ours by faith in the living Christ, and they are handed to us in the moment when faith is born. But every day of faithful walking with the Lord brings us more and more into the possession of our spiritual estates, as every day we have new surprises in "the unsearchable riches in Christ." Therefore "in your patience ye shall possess your souls."