The Rock That Is Higher

‘‘Lead me to the rock that is higher than I.” Psaum lxi. 2.

WE can only find our refuge in something bigger than ourselves. Even our home cannot be just our own size or it would become our grave. We must have room to stretch or we shall shrink. If we were never to meet anybody who is most evidently bigger than ourselves, we should speedily suffer from arrested growth. Even my reading must be a rock that is higher than I. It must lift up mine eyes in aspiration and discovery and wonder. If my books are about my own size, if they make no exacting demand upon me, if the food they offer is only soft stuff with never a hard crust which requires thorough mastication, my mental life would not even be allowed to remain stationary, but would pass through swift impoverishment and deterioration. Yes, even my books must be higher than I if I am to rise.

And this is true of everything else, but it is pre-eminently true of our God. Our God must be bigger than ourselves or our religion will be a petrifaction. But the deadly peril is that in our every-day working thought of God, He is often no bigger than ourselves. He is not a great Being to be looked up to and to be greatly worshipped. He is more of our own size, on our own level, a Being to be looked at and not to be revered.

“Thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself.’ That is the real danger, not so much in theory as in practice. We act as though the Holy God were just like ourselves. And so there arises a flippant intimacy which we foolishly regard as freedom. We take liberties with God and call it liberty. There is a hail-fellow-well-met sort of air even about our spiritual communion. There is no adoration, no wonder, no awe which draws us to our knees. We speak to Him without much thought about it. We say “anything that comes.” There are no soul silences. There is no great listening. We are as big as our Rock. We are not as those on whom there falls the solemn shadow of the Almighty. There will be no depth in our life while there is no height in our vision. Our prayers will move among lesser things until we gaze upon the unutterable glory. And here we can be mightily helped by the inspired Word. Let us take some great passage of Scripture where the glory of the Lord is revealed. Let us read it very slowly. Let us linger before the heavenly treasure. Let us fix our eyes steadily upon the glory. Let us kneel before it. Let us look up and pray! I am now before the Rock that is higher than I. And such a prayer could not be thoughtless. It could not be filled with trifles. Even before I begin to speak in audible prayer there will be an enlargement of aspiration and desire. Worship will be ennobled. ‘* Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised.’’ I should enter into this Psalmist’s secret which is the secret of the Lord.

One other word. The soul finds her true rest in aspiration. The soul cannot rest when it is cramped. There is great rest in stretching. ‘‘ Reaching out to the things that are before.’ That strainless rest becomes ours when the Rock is higher than ourselves.