The God of Peace

God is strong, omnipotent. We need not fear that His power to keep us will ever fail. There never is a moment when He is not able to sustain us. When the question is asked, “From whence shall my help come?” the answer is, “My help cometh from Jehovah, who made heaven and earth.”* (Psalm 121:1-2)ASV He who made all the worlds and keeps them all in being can surely bear up one little human life and protect it from harm.

God is wise. We are not wise enough to direct the affairs of our own lives, even if we had the power to shape things to our minds. Our outlook is limited—cut off by life’s close horizons. We do not know what the final outcome of this or that choice would be. Oft-times the things we think we need, and think would bring us happiness and good, would only work us harm in the end. Things we dread and shrink from, supposing they would bring us hurt and evil, are oft-times the bearers to us of rich blessings. We are not wise enough to choose our own circumstances, or to guide our own affairs. Only God can do this for us. He not only has strength—He has also knowledge of us and of our need and of our danger. He knows all about us—our condition, our sufferings, our trials, our griefs, the little things that vex us, as well as the great things that would crush us. The following lines give the lesson of faith:

“The little, sharp vexations,
And the briars that catch and fret—
Why not take all to the Helper
Who never has failed you yet?

“Tell Him about the heartache,
And tell Him the longing, too;
Tell Him the baffled purpose
When you scarce knew what to do.

“Then, leaving all your weakness
With the One divinely strong,
Forget that you bore the burden,
And carry away the song.”1

God is love. Strength alone would not be enough. Strength is not always gentle. A tyrant may be strong, but we would not care to entrust our life to him. We crave affection, tenderness. God is love. His gentleness is infinite. The hands into which we are asked to commit our spirit are wounded hands—wounded in saving us. The heart over which we are asked to nestle is the heart that was broken on the cross in love for us. We need not fear to stay ourselves on such a being.

“I have no answer for myself or thee,
Save that I learned beside my mother’s knee:
‘All is of God that is, and is to be;
And God is good.’ Let this suffice us still,
Resting in childlike trust upon His will
Who moves to His great ends unthwarted by the ill.”2

God is eternal. Human love is very sweet. A mother’s bosom is a wondrously gentle place for a child to nestle in. A loving marriage is a haven of joy to the couple within its encircling embrace. The other day two letters came from friends staying at a sanatorium. One was from a young wife, married only last summer, now fighting a battle with tuberculosis. She wrote hopefully, referring to the many hemorrhages she had had, but saying that now she was surely recovering. She then spoke of her desire to get well enough to go home soon to her husband. “Surely He will not separate us so early,” she wrote; “we are so happy together!” The other letter was from the sick woman’s friend who is with her. She wrote that the doctors have no hope.

So frail is human strength, though back of it is tenderest, truest love. All that love can do, all that money can do, all that skill can do, avails nothing. Human arms may clasp us very firmly, yet their clasp cannot keep us from the power of disease or from the cold hand of death. But the love and strength of God are everlasting. Nothing can ever separate us from Him (Romans 8:38-39). An Old Testament promise reads: “The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms.”* (Deuteronomy 33:27) If we are stayed upon the eternal God, nothing ever can disturb us, for nothing can disturb Him on whom we are reposing. If we are held in the clasp of the everlasting arms, we need not fear that we shall ever be separated from the enfolding.

The position of the everlasting arms in this picture is suggestive—“underneath.” They are always underneath us. No matter how low we sink, in weakness, in faintness, in pain, in sorrow, we never can sink below these everlasting arms. We never can drop out of their clasp. A father tried to save his child in the waves, wildly clasping his arms about the loved form. But his arms, though nerved by most passionate love, were too weak, and the child slipped away from them and sank down in the dark waters. But evermore, in the deepest floods, the everlasting arms will be underneath the feeblest, most imperilled child of God. Sorrow is very deep, but still and forever, in the greatest grief, these arms of love are underneath the sufferer. Then when death comes, and every earthly support is gone from beneath us, when every human arm unclasps and every face of love fades from before our eyes, and we sink away into what seems darkness and the shadow of death, we shall only sink into the everlasting arms underneath us.

The word “are,” too, must not be overlooked—“Underneath are the everlasting arms.” This is one of the wonderful present tenses of the Bible. To every trusting believer, to each one, in all the ages, to you who today are reading these words and trying to learn this lesson, as well as to those to whom the words were first spoken, God says, “Underneath you are now, this moment, every moment, the everlasting arms.”