STRONGLY to gaze upon something, so strongly that the eye does not wander away from it, expresses altogether clearly, though it be in language without words, the desire to possess it.
Especially with animals, and among our domestic animals, with the dog, this is very evident. If he will what we call retrieve, and you hold the ball or stick in the uplifted hand, the ready animal has no eye away from your hand, as your hand turns, turns his head, and all his restless gazing has no other meaning, than that you will toss the ball, that he may catch it.
So is the child on the morning of his birthday, when he has no eye for anything save the toy you hold in your hand, and hears nothing of your words of congratulation, but solely gazes upon that present designed for him, as it were to look it out of your hand, that it may pass over into his.
He who in moments of high tension awaits a letter or telegram, and finally sees the messenger come, pays no attention to the man, nor to what he says, but solely to the packet, which is in his hand, to draw it as it were with his eyes toward himself.
The thoughtless traveler who lost his purse by the way, and going back sees an innocent child come toward him with it, would afterward not be able to tell you, what the child looked like and how he was dressed. The lost purse claimed all his attention. For this he looked, thereupon he gazed, till it was safely back again in his hand.
And so, amid all sorts of circumstances, there is with every living creature that tense gazing upon what some one else carries or holds in his hand, the natural expression of strong desire, to see it pass over into his own hand.
And this bold image the Psalmist in Psalm 10, 14 (Dutch ver.) transfers to our Father in heaven.
Is there one of His servants on earth, who is bent beneath the load of anxiety and care, then, says the singer, God fixes His eye upon that anxiety and care so strongly, that at length he who carries it lets go of it and it passes over into God’s hand.
“Thou seest the trouble and the distress,” is in the Dutch version expressed far too weakly. It should be: Thou hast no eye away from our trouble and from our distress. Thou gazest unceasingly upon it, thereby to express that we should pass it over into thine hand.
Thy Fathereye like a magnet draws it out of our hand, that it might pass over into Thy Fatherhand.
Only so does this glorious ending: “That it may be committed into Thy hand,” come to its own.
Trouble and distress are not the same. They refer to the same oppression of soul, but express it from two different sides.
“Trouble” is the active, “distress” the passive in the suffering that overtakes us.
We in general express it in this way, that there is a part of suffering, with which we struggle; that is the active, if you will the trouble. But there is also another part of the suffering, under which our soul bends herself down altogether; that is the passive; here expressed by distress.
Sore affliction has two extremities. The one from where it goes out of God’s impenetrable counsel. And the other the point, where it enters into our human heart.
It is a dark stream which we feel pour over us, as going out from God, and from this side we make no effort of resistance. We are altogether passive and undergo it.
And that is what the Psalmist calls our distress. But we feel that dark stream rushing up upon our human heart and enter therein, and from that side the waters of our soul struggle and move in against it, and that is what the Psalmist calls trouble.
Neither the one nor the other can be spared us. Distress without trouble would make us succumb. Trouble without distress would bring us into rebellion.
And only when that selfsame suffering is struggled through simultaneously, and is undergone in distress of soul, is there that holy equilibrium, which brings rest and which comforts us.
WHEN that equilibrium still tarries, or after having been found, is lost again, there is something that cuts and wounds in the soul. And then the Spirit in us sings to us through ourselves, through our believing ego: “O my soul, why art thou cast down, and why art thou disquieted within me? Hope thou in God, seek thy rejoicings in His praises.”
Then, led and impelled by the Spirit, faith comes to restore the equilibrium, and this always goes out from a seeking of God’s fellowship.
“I set the Lord always before me; because He is at my right hand, I shall not be moved (Ps. 16, 8).
Not that God was gone. God is never gone. But a cloud had come in between Him and our soul. And now the eye of faith pierces through that cloud. The Omnipresent becomes present to us again. The eye of our soul discovers Him close by us. We become aware, we feel His holy presence as at our right hand. And it is again reality with us what we so often thoughtlessly have sung: “I shall then continually be with Thee, in all my need, anxiety and pain.”
We again with Him, and He again with us.
No separation longer.
Toward us outflowing and toward us outstreaming fellowship. Underneath the everlasting arms of Compassion, and God’s Hiddenness that hovers over our habitation.
IN this disposition of soul you become aware, that the eye of God gazingly directs itself to the burden of trouble and distress, which you have so bitterly to carry, and under which your soul succumbed.
It is as though not upon your somber musing, but only and solely upon that trouble and upon that distress that the Lord holds His Fathereye fixed.
And from this your God does not desist, till His end is gained, and at length you understand, that you have to commit that heavy burden of your trouble and distress into His hand.
The Lord does not come to you, to witness your suffering, and to complain with the complaint of your agitated mind. He comes to take your trouble and your distress from you upon Himself. Only He does not take it perforce. You must pass it over to Him. And therefore He gazes so restlessly and so long upon the burden, that weighs you down, till at length you understand what that Divine gazing means to say, and with a last effort of faith you lift that burden on high, and before the face of your God you place it upon His altar.
And then the Divine eye expresses something, as though it would say: “Now you have been again as a child before your Father,” and then the heart realizes again, how rich it is in possessing such a compassionate God as our Father.
A becoming aware, that God so to speak for one moment abandoned the stars, and withdrew His care from the whole world, to be engaged solely with us alone, and to concern Himself with our trouble and with our distress.
AND do not ask, whether from that moment on you are now without trouble and without distress.
For that were to break again the fellowship with your God, and not understand what God did for you.
That trouble, that distress, which He took into His hand, are not neutral. Your name is on them. The sadness of your heart resounds in them. The blood of your soul cleaves to them. It is your trouble, it is your distress. A burden of suffering which belongs to you, in which your own past works its after effects, where the cords of your own inner existence lie braided through one another, and which, though now it rests in God’s hand, is still attached with a thousand invisible fibers to your inner substance of soul.
It was indeed no external affliction, which loose, and independently of your heart, was laid upon you, and could be taken off from you, as a garment is divested.
In that trouble and in that distress is your own life, draws your own soul, undulates the stream of perceptions of your own heart, and that your God could take it into His hand, was just because He put the eternal arms of Compassion underneath that life of your heart and so from within out, by His fellowship with the life of your soul, established the fellowship with your suffering.
No sooner, therefore, can you by unbelief cut off His fellowship, than your soul sinks in again, and again becomes cast down. And blessed comfortings endure only so long as your God in you, and from the depth of your own soul, from within out, with Divine compassion, lifts up as it were the trouble and the distress, lest they crush you.
Therefore without Jesus there can never be real comforting in our suffering, simply because such intimate fellowship of soul with the God of all Mercies can not exist apart from the reconciliation of the blood of the Cross.
As “saints and beloved“ we must lie at God’s Fatherheart, so to be suffused inwardly with His comfortings, and saints we are not without Jesus. Without Jesus we are nothing but sinful creatures, ripe for damnation, and not for comfortings; points of attraction for wrath and not for the compassions of our God.
Yea, more still, by asking that we commit our trouble and our distress into His hand, there repeats itself in the struggling of our own soul actually nothing else than what on Golgotha makes the Man of sorrows so uniquely great.
Then in the great, what with us operates after in the small, but always the one impenetrable mystery. God Himself Who takes upon Himself the burden of our sin, and so also the burden of our sorrow, lest under the trouble and the distress our forsaken soul should succumb.
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