“Through the paths of the seas” (Ps. 8:8)
When someone informs us that Brother Downanout is passing through deep waters, we know at once what is meant. There are few who have had any experience at all on the journey heavenward who have not, at one time or another, been through the deep waters of testing. It may have been by reason of sickness, or bereavement, through business worries or a time of distress occasioned by slanderous tongues and lying lips. Whatever the cause, there are few who have not plumbed the depths of some dark experience.
There used to be a facile method of classing all such experiences as judgments sent from God because of man’s own follies and misdemeanors. Certainly, if the prophet Jonah, for instance, had obeyed the Word of the Lord, he would not have found himself down in the deep, in the midst of the seas, where the floods encompassed him and the weeds wound themselves around him (Jonah 2:3-5). Yet these bitter consequences of his disobedience became a glorious experience nonetheless. God tested his faith, but Jonah proved the constant faithfulness and love of God, so that he was given grace to declare: “I cried by reason of mine affliction unto the Lord—and HE HEARD ME.”
But it is a mistake to assume that all such crises are judgments sent from God. To think this is to miss the whole grandeur of our Father’s wise plan in leading us so that we might hurry to Him in our need and lean on Him in dependence and confidence. Thus we can enter into Jeremiah’s plaint when he said: “Mine enemies chased me sore, like a bird, without cause…Waters flowed over mine head,” and in despair he cried: “I am cut off.” But then his faith revived, and he was able to look up and declare: “I called upon Thy Name, O Lord, out of the low dungeon. Thou hast heard my voice…Thou drewest near in the day that I called upon Thee: Thou saidst, Fear not” (Lam. 3:52-57).
It has always been our Father’s purpose to reassure His children that, in spite of trials and troubles which may sweep over us like a stormy sea, He is with us in the storm, and that we may hear His comforting word: “Fear not; for I am with thee” (Gen. 26:24). It was this which enabled the Apostle Paul to assert that no depth of woe or circumstance could ever separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus, our Lord (Rom. 8:39).
Like the Apostle, the Psalmist was also upborne by the serenity of his faith, even when that sinking feeling threatened to overwhelm him, and he cried to the Lord from the depths (Ps. 130:1). “If I take the wings of the morning,” he said, “and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea; even there shall Thy hand lead me, and Thy right hand shall hold me” (Ps. 139:9-10).
O, that we might always remember that no matter how deep are the waters through which we are called to pass, deeper still were the sorrows which our Saviour bore for us in the place where there was no standing.
We allow ourselves to fear that, because we experience trials, our God is far from us, when all the time it is His opportunity of assuring us of His constant love. In fact, it is His way of bringing us Home to Himself. “[Thou hast] made the depths of the sea a way for the ransomed to pass over” said Isaiah; “therefore the redeemed of the Lord shall return, and come with singing unto Zion” (Isa. 51:10-11).
And so, as waves of trouble and perplexity come rolling with ever-increasing intensity upon this saddened world, we can look forward with a calm spirit to that time of our last great need when, if our Lord has not come for us to the air, we shall walk through the valley with the shadows of death towering above us on either side. But, even then, we will fear no evil, for as we step forward we will find that we do not walk alone. Then the noise of the waters will be hushed as we look up in our Saviour’s face with perfect trust, and say: “I will fear no evil, FOR THOU ART WITH ME.”
He will keep me till the river
Rolls its waters at my feet;
Then He’ll bear me safely over
Where the lov’d ones I shall meet.