The Value of Good Cheer

“Thou shalt compass me about with songs of deliverance,” — Psalm xxxii. 7.

Why “so7igs of deliverance *’; why not “deliverance” itself? Because the best way to deliver a man from calamity is to put a song in his heart. There are some who sink under their calamity, and there are some who swim through it. I think you will find that the difference between these lies in the comparative amount of their previous cheer. The balance generally turns on the hearing or not hearing of yesterday’s song. They who have the song already in their heart pass over the Red Sea; they who have heard no previous music are submerged in the wave. We speak of the physical strength for bearing an operation. Are we aware how much of the strength required is not physical? I had a letter lately from one at a far distance. She was about to undergo a severe physical operation. She stated the day and hour when it was to take place. She said she would like at that day and hour to have the knowledge that some one was thinking of her, that some one was praying for her, that some one was, spiritually, holding her hand. She recovered. Will anybody say that the strength by which she bore the strain was purely physical! Will anybody say that the song in the heart went for nothing! In any crisis moment I should say it would turn the scale. Sometimes my physical chances seem equally balanced between life and death. At such moments a previous song in the heart will give the vote for the prolonging of my days.

My Father, compass me with Thy songs! It is not the songs after the battle that I ask; my own heart will give me these. What I need is a song before the battle. I can easily get the song of Moses; what I require is the song of the Lamb. The song of Moses came after the triumph; it was the paean of victory. But the song of the Lamb is previous to the conflict. It was sung ere Gethsemane was entered. It preceded the hour of sacrifice. Before the sweatdrops fell, before the struggle woke, before the perils of the night arose. Thou didst send to Jesus Thy voice from heaven — Thy promise ot glory. Thou didst compass Him before the battle with songs of deliverance. He took a light with Him into the valley. Not joyless did He meet the foe. He stood by the warm fire ere He went out into the cold. He felt the pressure of a hand ere He faced the silence. Thy song was with Him in the night; it waited not for morning. The flower got into the heart earlier than the thorn, and it deadened the thorn. Be mine this song of the Lamb — this song before deliverance! The song of Moses can be delayed till the conflict is over; but I cannot dispense with that other music — the song before the sacrifice — the song of the Lamb!