“SING unto the Lord with thanksgiving; sing praise upon the harp unto our God,” (147, 7) for, so the Holy Ghost bears witness through the Psalmist, “for our Lord is great.”
And what are the four things, in which that greatness of our God shines out most strongly?
First therein, that He builds up Jerusalem. That is and always remains His highest work of art. Then His majesty is so mightily manifest, that He telleth the number of the stars and knoweth them all by name. In the third place His greatness speaks in His battle against the godless and in the support which He offers His faithful people. But in the fourth place also our God is therein so worshipfully great, “That He healeth the broken in heart, and bindeth up their wounds” (147, 3).
Our God wills always to be thanked and praised. Not only in moments of rich gladness; but thanked and praised also by those lips, which He himself has closed up in sorrow, and from that heart, which He himself deeply wounds.
Even then praise is comely, because that selfsame God, Who wounds, is also then rich in love.
Then bitter grief first forces from the troubled heart pitiful lamentations and complaints; but in that complaining there is always something sinful.
God may never be complained against; He must always be magnified and praised.
Praised and thanked in such a way, that also in your deepest grief you feel that you love your God, because you experience how also in that distress of heart He loves you first.
Hence no reasonings; no speaking to yourself with words; but an observing how tenderly God loves you in your griefs, and therefore kiss the hand, not that strikes—that you cannot do—but that struck, and now so divinely compassionately binds you up in your sorrow.
NOT as though some one else inflicted the blow, and that now God comes to bind you up. That would occasion endless restlessness, and Scripture directly opposes the suggestion. It reads so clearly: “The Lord grieves and He binds up. The Lord wounds, and His hands heal.” That it is the Lord, Who kills, the Holy Ghost reiterates so emphatically, that we might be instructed regarding it, when one dies away from the circle of our domestic wealth.
He who dares not face this, and does not see clearly into this, cannot taste the sweet, in his distresses of soul to be bound up by his God.
Something of this, by way of comparison, the child of a physician can experience on earth, when, because it was necessary, that child was so painfully operated on by his own father. But now the operation is over. The knife, to which blood cleaves, is laid aside. And now comes that selfsame father, no more with knife but with lint and balsam in hands, and with a tear in the eye and with tender care, that excels itself, he binds up the deep wound, which with his own hand, because it was necessary, he inflicted in the flesh of his child.
True, the figure is weak. To whom indeed would you liken God? But, however weak, it tells you something of what God does to you.
He took action; He cut in deep; because it was necessary. He not only wounded, but wounded you through and through. Anything less deep, the wound would have been purposeless, useless pain. To the fineness of a hair your Father in the heavens knew, how deep the incision had to be cut into your soul.
But see, no sooner is the painful operation ended, but the sacred lint and the divine balsam are already at hand; and that same divine hand, which so deeply wounded you, now turns itself to you in divine compassion, and He Himself binds up your wounds.
He Himself
Not as though human pity also would not operate soothingly upon the wound of your heart. Every expression of sympathy on the part of a fellow-man is refreshing. And when God gives you a brother, who understands you; who lives equally deeply as you yourself live; or also one, who suffered as you suffered, and with the experience of his own heart comes to your heart, that human comforting can already affect you soothingly and beneficently.
Provided, and this belongs to it, you see and recognize, that it is God, Who unlocked that brotherheart to you, poured out tenderness in it for you, and animated it with a word, which He had intended for you.
Yea, really it should be said, that such a human comforting only operates efficaciously upon you, when he who comforts you does not do it for his own sake, but lets himself be used of his God, to comfort you, and to His glory.
So viewed, it is already in that human comforting your God, Who comes to your aid, and appointed this for you.
But He does not leave it with this.
He is not a God afar off, Who leaves this soothing work of comforting in the hands of others, but He comes Himself.
O, when more than in such moments was your God ever near by; in your hidden dwelling; entering into your heart; and when ever more strongly than in such a struggle have you felt the Holy Ghost operating within you, praying with you and praying for you with groanings unutterable?
He binds up their wounds.
So the Word testifies, and so age after age it has been experienced by God’s saints.
For in such days of bitter anxiety God’s saints are so highly privileged.
Not as though that merciful Father, Who makes His sun to shine on the evil and the good, should not also come to those other children for their help with His grace; only they take no notice of it. They do not taste the sweet and blessedness of the same. In the days of their grief and of their mourning they are so poor.
But God’s child is so rich.
Then he who believes, lies down, and his wound, the wound of his heart, bleeds so badly. It causes so great inward pain. Faith makes sensitiveness; and insofar suffering is made heavier by faith. Also God’s child then observes his own powerlessness. Everything storms in upon him. Conscience drives so strongly from within. His whole being is put to grief. But, and this is so glorious, in the midst of that crying sorrow of heart he also observes, that his God has dealings with him.
And when his God then comes to him, and in the Father-eye of his God he reads that deep, divine expression of unspeakable compassion, then something draws through his soul, that lifts up his entire being in grace, and he sees, he perceives, how much his God loves him; and to realize this, is comfort; that soothes the pain.
AND yet, even with this the Lord does not leave it.
In such moments He not merely looks upon you with the eye of His divine compassion in so comforting a way, but He also comes with His almighty hand to bind up your wounds.
He, Who sees the wound not only from outside, but looks into it down to the root of the life of your soul; yea, Who fathoms it more deeply than you fathom it yourself; and, so to speak, knows more accurately than you know yourself, what of loss, of sorrow and of anguish of soul, also with respect to your future there hides in that wound of your heart.
And then He proceeds to bind up that wound.
Then He relaxes the nervous tension, and grants you grace, that you can weep, and that yet again in your tears you can control yourself.
Then in the hiddenness of your being He fortifies your heart, and stops that bleeding, and arrests that outpouring of cutting pain.
Then He applies His holy balsam, that it aches no more so badly, and covers your wound, that sensitiveness may not outdo your strength.
Yea, then He enswathes and enwraps your soul with gentle operations of grace, till at length the wound in its painful working is tempered.
And as then imperceptibly the divine bandage has been applied, He does not go away, but remains with you, and hands you the cup of the elixer of life, and stimulates again the glorious working of your faith.
He then brings you His Jesus richly and gloriously before the soul. Not to divert you, but to teach you, how in the work of your Savior such conditions were taken into account.
That deep, divine cross of Golgotha, in which sinks away the whole world of your heart, and from which reconciled and enriched it always comes up again.
O, your God is so great; the Lord is so lovely. Yea, truly in such days also praise is comely.
And as the wound of your heart has been bound up of your God and you lie down under the shadow of His tender Father care, no, then it is no more at a cost, and you no longer have to do violence to yourself; but then it goes with such affectionate tenderness and so heartily, that you thank God for His tender compassion; and if then there are those who suffer with you, then indeed, it becomes a singing by turns with thanksgiving; for then in and by your grief God has enriched you.
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