The Tender Solicitude by John
McDuff The very hairs of your head are all numbered. Matthew
10 30 What a promise is this! All that befalls you, to the
very numbering of your hairs is known to God. Nothing can
happen by accident or chance, nothing can elude His inspection. The fall of the forest leaf,
the fluttering of the insect, the waving of the angel's wing,
the annihilation of a world, all are equally noted by Him.
Man speaks of great things and small things, but God knows no
such distinction. How especially comforting to
think of this tender solicitude with reference to His own covenant
people, that He meets out all their joys and all their sorrows
Every sweet and every bitter is ordained by Him. Even wearisome
knights are appointed. Not a pang I feel, not a tear
I shed, but is known to Him. What are called dark dealings
are the ordinations of undeviating faithfulness. Man may err, his
ways are often crooked, but as for God, his way is perfect. He puts my tears into his bottle. Every moment his everlasting
arms are underneath and around me. He keeps me as the apple
of his eye. He bears me as a man bears his
own son. Do I look to the future? Is there
much of uncertainty and mystery hanging over it? It may be much
foreboding of evil. Trust Him. All is marked out
for me. Dangers will be averted. Bewildering
mazes will show themselves to be interlaced and interweaved
with mercy. He keeps the feet of His saints. Not a hair of their head will
be touched. He leads sometimes darkly, sometimes
sorrowfully, most frequently by cross and circuitous ways,
which we ourselves would not have chosen, but always wisely,
always tenderly, with all its mazy windings and turnings, its
roughness and ruggedness, the believers, is not only a right
way, but the right way, the best, which covenant love and wisdom
could select. Nothing, says Jeremy Taylor,
does so establish the mind amid the rollings and turbulence of
present things, as both a look above them and a look beyond
them, above them to the steady and loving hand by which they
are ruled, and beyond them, to the sweet and beautiful end,
to which, by that hand, they will be brought. The great counsellor,
says Thomas Brooks, puts clouds and darkness round about him,
bidding us follow at his beck through the cloud, promising
an eternal and uninterrupted sunshine on the other side. On
that other side, we shall see how every apparent rough blast
has been hastening our boats nearer the desired haven. Well
may I commit the keeping of my soul to Jesus in well-doing,
as unto a faithful Creator, He gave Himself for me. This transcendent
pledge of love is the guarantee for the bestowment of every other
needed blessing. O blessed thought! My sorrows
are numbered by the Man of Sorrows. My tears are counted by Him who
shed first His tears, and then His blood for me. He will impose
no needless burden, and exact no unnecessary sacrifice. There
was no unnecessary drop in the cup of His own sufferings. Neither will there be in that
of His people. Though He slays me, yet will
I trust in Him. Therefore, comfort one another
with these words.