Filled With God’s Fulness

WE give Thee thanks, Almighty God! for the words spoken by that strong, stout soul, who tells us that we may be filled with the fulness of God. Almighty! we shrink at first from words like these, “filled with the fulness of God.” When we look at this wide world, and think of all that is therein; when we think of the great worlds so far away, at which we can only gaze; when we think of Nature, and of the skill that Thou hast given us to find out and to know her secrets; when we remember the records thereof that are beneath our feet, under the earth, in the deep places in the sea; when we write the history of man’s strange, sad story; when we remember that all the life that has ever been in this world, is part of the fulness of God; then, Lord God! we shrink and say, “Shall we indeed be filled with the fulness of God?”

Lord God! we look abroad, and lo! the little flower that blows is filled with the sunlight; and the few tones of the bird’s song are full of sweetness; and yet we shrink and say, “Our vessel is but earthly, it is but small; shall it hold the fulness of God?” Yea, Lord God Almighty! our vessel may be small, but if it is of Thy fulness to be filled, it is large enough for Thee. So be it. Let the fulness of God pass by us, in us, through us, that we may shine with Thy fulness; that when we love, it may be with the fulness of Thy love; that so, we being filled with the fulness of God, may, in this life, live in the Life of God, and in the world to come know Thy fulness for evermore.

Almighty! Thou hast so ordered and fashioned us, that at times we are filled with a fulness that is not Thine. Some strange fountain flows, we know not how it comes, nor whence its bitter waters sprang; but here they are, and even those things that might not have had bitterness, have been made bitter; and of the waters of Marah we are called to drink, where there might have been wine; and the short chapter of man’s life that was given us to some better end, is all marred and blotted, and even that Gate which should admit us into the large wide fulness of God, seems, oh! so black and dark! Almighty! why? Give us the fulness of God! The fulness of life that conquers death! that we may dare to look forward to that day when this mere form of life shall be changed, and we pass on to a larger life, a nobler body, better conditions, wider influences, an untroubled soul.

Almighty God! help us to look forward and hear the words of that great, stout soul, who looked beyond the races of men and their trials, beyond the conquest of death and the victory over the grave, and beheld the multitude “named of Christ in heaven and in earth,” the glorious family of mankind: who looked beyond sin, and suffering, and death, and hell, and beheld God, all in all. So, when the troubles and sins, the disquiets and unrests of this weary world seem to rise too high for us, on some top of Pisgah may we stand, from which we may look down on all these things, and behold, far away, and yet near, dim in distance, yet certain in God, the great day when God shall be all in all.

When we tremble and fear, because of the greatness of our distress, or the keenness of our grief, because of the loss of those we love, or, worse still, because of the loss of love itself; when these things rise up all chill, and there seems nothing beyond them, and these snow-topped mountains shut us into despair; then let us think that all these things are of Thy purposes, determined by Thee, made and governed by Thy lovingkindness. And as we, gazing at the western clouds, judge of how the day shall close by watching their passing, so may we know how all this sinful strife shall end, when we read that while we were yet dead in trespasses and sins, Thou didst love us, and quicken us together with Christ.

O Eternal Lover! Who lovest the living and the dead, Most Merciful Father! Who lookest upon the quick and the dead, and Who quickenest the dead into Thine own Life, save us from all distrust; and while the storm is loud, and the battle rolls, and the vine blossoms not, and the fig-tree fails, may we have the sweet calm peace of God, looking forward to the blessed day when God shall be all in all.

Then we can at this time go back to our work with heaven-got glory; back to our labour, however lowly, as workmen of God, desiring ever to give full proof of this our calling, of our unity with this family “named in heaven and in earth, of Christ;” that we too may have part in that wondrous song of Moses and the Lamb; of the sword of war, and the peace of God; the fiery days of man’s trial, and the sweet days of man’s redemption; of man’s fall, and of his uprising; of blindness and of vision; of sickness and of healing; of death, and of life.

Give us all this hope in Thee; may we cleanse ourselves from those low things that hide Thee from us, and rise at last to the clear vision of God.

This we do ask, in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord.—AMEN.