Daily Devotionals

Music For the Soul

Devotional: July 24th

THE ANTIDOTE TO ALL DESPONDENCY

Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard? The Everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary. - Isaiah 40:28.

Here is an appeal to the familiar thought of an unchangeable God as the antidote to all despondency and the foundation of all hope. To whom is the prophet speaking? The words of the previous verse tell us, in which he addresses himself to Jacob, or Israel, who is represented as complaining, "My way is hid from the Lord." That is to say, he speaks to the believing, but despondent, part of the exiles in Babylon; and to them He comes with this vehement question, which implies that they were in danger, in their despondency, of practically forgetting the great thought. There is wonder in the question, there is a tinge of rebuke in it, and there is distinctly implied this: that whensoever there steals over our spirits despondency or perplexity about our own individual history, or about the peace and the fortunes of the Church or the world, the one sovereign antidote against gloom and low spirits, and the one secret of unbroken cheer and confidence is to lift our eyes to the unwearied God.

The life of men and of creatures is like a river, with its source and its course and its end. The life of God is like the ocean, with joyous movement of tides and currents of life and energy and purpose, but ever the same, and ever returning upon itself. "The Everlasting God " is "the Lord," and Jehovah the Unchanged, Unchangeable, Inexhaustible Being, spends, and is unspent; gives, and is none the poorer; works, and is never wearied; lives, and with no tendency to death in His life; flames, with no tendency to extinction in the blaze. The bush burned and was not consumed: " He fainteth not, neither is weary."

The prophet takes his stand upon the most elementary truths of religion. His appeal to them is: "What do you call God? You call Him the Lord, do you not? What do you mean by calling Him that? Do you ever ask yourselves that question? You mean this, if you mean anything: " He fainteth not, neither is wearied." "Jehovah" is interpreted from the lips of God Himself: " I Am that I Am." That is the expression of what metaphysicians call absolute, underived, eternal Being, limited and shaped and determined by none else, flowing from none else; eternal, lifted up above the fashions of time. Of Him men cannot say " He was " or " He will be," but only "He is" - by Himself, of Himself, for ever unchanged.