WHEN it is said of the Lord our God, that in sorrow He upholds the suffering soul, you should not understand this of His ordinary Almightiness, whereby He carries the life of our soul, also in the days of great happiness.
There is mention here of a support, as balance against a power of suffering, that presses down our soul, and threatens to make her succumb.
God truly carries all things by the word of His power. But yet in nature plant and tree are so disposed, that they need no upholding from without. In wild woods you put no sticks by young growing trees, and the chick runs away on legs of its own, so soon as it comes from the shell. The animal can not put apronstrings around its young nor take it by the hand and teach it to walk.
Only with man the possibility of being upheld is founded in his nature. A child does not learn to walk of itself. It learns to walk by mother, who upholds it.
This is far finer than what you observe with plant and animal. It betrays far richer life, a life susceptible to all sorts of fluctuations and changes, intended to pass through a multiplicity of conditions, and, in accordance with these conditions, disposed in other ways to be assisted.
In case of injury or accident you observe the same. The mare stands helplessly by the side of the colt that broke its leg. With people we take him who hurt himself and fell down, by the arm, and help him along by our support. True, there are animals which in such a case take their young by the mouth in the neck, and drag it along, but upholding, in all the rich, fine sense of the word, is something that occurs among people alone.
But this very “upholding” presupposes, that in ordinary times you go on your own feet, that you hold yourself up, and would laugh at support, that any one would offer you.
Not of yourself, always by God’s power of course, but yet so, that God’s power works energy in you, and that, thanks to that energy, you hold yourself up, and thanks to the power given you, without support you pursue your way.
This is the ordinary in our life. When such is the case with us, we are normal. And he who is truly pious, thanks his God every morning and every evening, when that ordinary ability of going without support, is granted and continued.
BUT that desired condition can change.
Directly after the body, when we injure our foot, or a fractured bone makes going impossible, or serious sickness so weakens us, that the knees give way and can no more carry the body.
In great old age this weakened condition can even become the ordinary one, when the grasshopper, as the Preacher says, shall be a burden, that he fears a height and there is terror in the way.
Then it becomes as in the days of childhood. Then an apronstring, now a crutch or cane. Then mother’s hand, now the shoulder of son or daughter, on which to lean.
Always that real human leaning and being upheld, prophesied in the child, in the day of old age so significantly experienced, and between cradle and grave every time occurring, when disease or accident breaks our ordinary power.
And Scripture transfers this also to the life of our soul.
Our soul is outlined in the body, and only in images borrowed from the body, are we able to give ourselves an account of the life of our soul.
So then is man’s soul destined, to hold itself up, to be master over itself, and to direct itself. By power given of God, naturally. But yet to stand and to go by indwelling power, as the trunk of the oak stands by the hardness of its wood, and the lion goes by the strength of his strong muscles.
But also with the soul of man like difference with the soul of the animal. With the young animal no support is known, with the young child support by training and education is indispensable. The spider born with the web-diploma and the bee with the comb-diploma. The young man only able by the support and leadership of others to obtain his art-diploma. There the instinct, which knows no support, here the laborious acquisition, which apart from support is unthinkable.
In gray old age, when the childish state begins, like helplessness.
And in the days and years that lie in between, likewise every time the events, which shock the soul so bitterly and fearsomely, that she supplicates for assistance. We call this the seeking after comfort, the homesickness after sympathy, depending and leaning on another who saves her from insinking.
WHY art thou cast down, O my soul, and why art thou disquieted within me?—such is the disposition of the soul, when the hour draws near, which calls for human and Divine upholding.
What held you up was your faith, your peace with God. But now Satan ensnares you and you fall into sin. And in place of what must hold you up, comes grievous contrition, and the burden of your sin weighs you down.
What upheld you was your conviction of being in God’s way and of fighting for His cause.
But now God does not go up with you to battle. Your adversary overcomes and treads you underfoot. Doubt takes possession of your soul, and in despondency you threaten to succumb.
Your work was your delight. To exert yourself in behalf of your family the joy of your life. But reverses hit you. Labor is in vain. Financial despair takes hold of your heart. And as paralyzed the vigor of your soul lies down.
Or again, your quiet family, and the life of your home with your own life, was your refreshing, a tent of light round about you. It upheld you, dripped oil in the fibers of your inner existence. And now the devastation of disease knocks on your door, and you must let it in; and death climbs in by your window, and grief and mourning grip your heart.
Then strength fails you. Then trembling comes upon your soul, so that you lose direction and course. Then it is as though the foundations are broken away from under the life of your soul, and an abyss opens itself beneath you, in which you fear to sink away. Even the light on your pathway is darkened, and all that is within you is cast down. You weep, and weeping gives release, but yet makes the waves of your downheartedness beat the more violently against your breast. You feel yourself as abandoned to a power of disconsolateness of heart, against which you have no resistance. And however much you try to lift yourself up, you every time fall down again.
Your nobility! For only as man, and as man of fine feeling, can you be cast down.
But your nobility likewise, because only so as man you become an object of Divine Compassion, and because in that compassion your God glorifies Himself in you.
AND then God sends you brothers and sisters who uphold your soul, and among those that uphold your soul He comes Himself (Ps. 54, 4, Dutch ver.).
But always to you as man.
There are three things which must then uphold you and keep you from sinking away: Your own effort, human sympathy, Divine compassion.
First your own effort.
Not permit yourself as a stock or stone to swoon down in the woundedness of your heart. You must will to be lifted up, and never let sentimentality in your sorrow steal into your mind. That would be opposing God.
Therefore God’s Word begins by saying: “Be strong, and He shall strengthen thine heart.” And therefore the melancholy rebuke in Psalms 42 and 43: “Why art thou cast down, O my soul, and why art thou disquieted within me. Hope thou in God!”
So one says to the invalid, whom one wants to lift up in bed: “You must help a bit,” and only that exertion frequently makes the lifting possible.
Therein is the honor of man, that faith still struggles to stand up, even though the foot every time slips again. What he wants, is not as a will-less weight to be dragged, but as a struggling child to be supported and upheld.
For upholding presupposes that you take hold of yourself, and assisted by that support, yourself hope to make progress.
The living man receives help. The dead are not upheld, but carried out.
BUT then that support comes, and God sends you those who uphold your soul.
Some do this from afar, others closer by, a very few very close by. But you are aware, how the hand of every one is stretched out toward you, to be of assistance to you and count themselves happy to be permitted to do it.
The sympathy of humanity. The suffering with you on the part of friends and relatives. The taking from you of a part of your suffering by those who are very near to you.
With one this is more necessary than with another, because the effect of sorrow is so different. Sometimes it is trembling and shaking, sometimes little more than quietly standing appalled. This depends on temperament and difference of feeling.
But they who come to your help are readily aware of this, and according to the measure of the danger of your succumbing, they double the assistance they offer you. At first it is almost a carrying. Then they let go a little, to see, that you lift up yourself again. And the true friend rejoices, when he observes that support is less and less necessary, and then unobservedly withdraws it. Forcing of friendship upon one or of assistance that has become superfluous, does not comfort, but annoys.
AND now in the third place among those, who come to render us aid, comes finally the Lord Himself.
Not at once. He first lets us get hold of ourselves. Then He sends human sympathy. And among human sympathizers He comes Himself.
“Among those that uphold us is the Lord.”
Then our best friends stand before and near us. Solicitous love exhausts itself, to find the word that can most deeply enter into our soul. But yet, they feel it themselves, down in your very heart, where the real wound is bleeding their word can not enter. Human sympathy can not reach it.
But God, Who created the heart, and Who wounded that heart, can reach it, and there He enters in with a special operation of grace by the Holy Spirit.
And then something glorious transpires. A feeling oneself almost blessed in the wound of his heart, because deeper than ever otherwise in that wound is felt the glorious blessedness of God’s love.
Then there is a spot within, of which we feel: there the very hand of my God buttresses up my sorrow.
And then you thank your friends, for their sympathy refreshed you so gloriously. But more ardently still you thank the God of all compassion, for His compassion was more than balsam, it was Manna by which the soul lives.
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