September 15

"I also will laugh at your calamity, I will mock when your fear cometh."—Proverbs 1:26.

SOMETIMES Wisdom in the Book of Proverbs makes me think of my Lord Jesus Christ. It is a portrait, drawn before Bethlehem and Nazareth and Golgotha and Olivet, of my Saviour, my Teacher, my King—the Wisdom of God.

Yet I must be very careful how I apply certain of these Old Testament verses to Him. Not all of them, surely, are meant for One so rich in mercy! Not all of them delineate the features of my Good Shepherd, who seeks me over moor and fen and crag and torrent until He finds me, and can bring me home rejoicing.

Will Jesus ever laugh in the day of anyone's calamity? Will He ever mock in the hour of anyone's fear, when the whirlwind of distress and anguish overwhelms the soul? Will there be victory, gladness for His heart, in the rout and ruin of His enemies at last? No, no; it will be the sharpest and sorrowfullest of pains to Him to say, Depart from Me.

We must reap as we sow; and the reaping will be terrible for those among us who persist in sowing to the flesh. But it will be terrible for Christ, too—terrible beyond the power of my thought to conceive, beyond all the skill of my imagination to limn and portray.

For His sake as well as for my own, that I may spare Him agony as well as save my life from death, let me turn to Him now. He is Love even more than He is Wisdom. He spoke the Parable of the Prodigal Son. He forgave Zacchæus, and the woman of the city, and the robber on the Tree. He will in no wise cast me out.