Daily Devotionals

Music For the Soul

Devotional: April 5th

THE ONE HELPER

A very present help in trouble. - Psalms 46:1

Many of us are trying to make up for not having the One by seeking to stay our hearts on the many. But no accumulation of insufficiencies will ever make a sufficiency. You may fill the heaven all over with stars bright and thick as those in the whitest spot in the galaxy, and it will be night still. Day needs the sun, and the sun is one, and when it comes the twinkling lights are forgotten. You cannot make up for God by any extended series of creatures, any more than a row of figures that stretched from here to Sirius and back again would approximate to infinitude.

The very fact of the multitude of helpers is a sign that none of them are sufficient. There are no end of "cures" for toothache - that is to say, there is none. There are no end of helps for men that have abandoned God - that is to say, every one in turn, when it is tried, and the stress of the soul rests upon it, gives, and is found to be a broken staff that pierces the hand that leans upon it.

Consult your own experience. What is the meaning of the unrest and distraction that marks the lives of most of the men in this generation? Why is it that you hurry from business to pleasure, from pleasure to business, until it is scarcely possible to get a quiet breathing-time for thought at all? Why is it but because one after another of your gods have proved insufficient, and so fresh altars must be built for fresh idolatries, and new experiments made, of which we can safely prophecy the result will be the old one. We have not got beyond St. Augustine’s saying: " Oh, God! my heart was made for Thee, and in Thee only doth it find repose." The many idols, though you multiply them beyond count, all put together, will never make the one God. You are seeking what you will never find. The many pearls that you seek will never be enough for you. The true wealth is One, One pearl of great price.

The Lord may seem to sleep on His hard, wooden pillow in the stern of the little fishing-boat, and even while the frail craft begins to fill may show no sign of help; but ere the waves have rolled over her, the cry of fear that yet trusts, and of trust that yet fears, wakes Him who knew the need, even while He seemed to slumber, and one mighty word, as of a master to some petulant slave, " Peace, be still," hushes the confusion, and rebukes the fear, and rewards the faith. We on whom the ends of the earth are come have the same Helper, the same Friend, that "the world’s grey patriarchs " had. They that go before do not prevent them that come after. The river is full still. The van of the pilgrim host did, indeed, long, long ago, drink, and were satisfied, but the bright waters are still as pellucid, still as near, still as refreshing, still as abundant as they ever were.