Kepler, the great astronomer, who laid the foundation of much of our knowledge of the stars, one day exclaimed, after spending hours in surveying the heavens, "I have been thinking over again the earliest thoughts of the Creator," and surely every time a man sacrifices himself, or takes up the cross for another he is thinking over again the earliest, deepest thought of the love of Christ.
Every time you do a gentle act for another who does not deserve it, every time you lay down your life to save others, every time you endure shame and spitting and scorn to rescue lost women and lost men, in the glow of your human interest, and amidst disappointment and rebuff you say, "Well, thank God, I am seeing deeper than ever I saw before into what Jesus has been feeling for me." Abraham learned more of the love of God the day he was led up Mount Moriah than anything else could have taught him.
Perhaps there are men and women who have been hearing all this, and who are saying, "Well, well, my life has been so dreary, so perplexed, that I cannot think God loves me." I pray you remember a text which says that "we have known and believed the love that God hath to us" (1 John 4:16).
Standing upon the granite block of redemption and providence, and the blessings which have come to our life, we must dare to face the inexplicable, the dark, and the mysterious; and reason that the pathway of love lies through these also, and when we have traversed them we shall look back on a trail of light. The love of God has never once failed me, and though I cannot see it, or how that trouble which menaces me is consistent with it, it is only the text over again, "The love of God passeth knowledge."
You cannot know it, you cannot tell its great track. "Thy way is in the sea, and Thy path in the great waters and Thy footsteps are not known" (Psa. 77:19). You cannot always follow Him, but you may always believe that there is love, though it passeth knowledge.
We need a baptism of love today. We all need it. Many are leading such a miserable life of repression; they are ever flying to jealousy and hatred and ill will and suspicion and dislike. Of course we do not admit these things, and yet they incessantly torment us and follow our footsteps, as the dog which we meant to leave at home, but which follows us. And in so far as they are permitted in heart or life they exclude the consciousness of our Saviour’s infinite love.
Let us absolutely and for ever put away all these: wrath, anger, malice, ill will and all uncharitableness. Let us reckon that such have neither part nor lot in our new resurrection life. Let us give up our ill will about each other and all who may have injured us, or at least tell Christ that we are willing to be channels through which His love may flow to them.
And when this is so, and in no part of our heart there is cherished anything that is inconsistent with perfect love, we shall not only understand as never before the unsearchable love of Christ, but we shall be able to claim a baptism of the Holy Spirit, who sheds abroad the love of God in willing, obedient, and believing souls.
From:
"The Exalted Christ" subtitled "Addresses and Bible readings Delivered at Mildmay Conference" by Rev. F.B. Meyer ; with a preface by J.E. Mathieson, Published 1900 by J. G. Wheeler in London.
PEACE
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