Resting the Soul

“Return unto thy rest, O my soul.” — Psa.Lm cxvi. 7. “Why art thou cast down, O my soul? Hope thou in God.”’ — Psa.m xlii. 5.

Tus counsel is very different to our ordinary practice in the common things of life. It is our ordinary custom to seek rest by dropping the bigger thing and taking up a smaller thing. We lay aside the book which severely taxes all the powers of our mind, and we turn for rest to a light novel or some loitering book of travel, or to a leisurely company of essays where the spirit is genial and where everything moves in quiet air and happy laughter. We rest ourselves in smaller fields. But the high counsel of the Psalmist takes us on quite another road. When the soul is tired and restless and disquieted he leads up from the smaller things to the greatest thing, even into the wonderful Presence of God. The tired eyes of the soul are to be rested in wider vision. The anxious mind is to be soothed in vaster contemplations. The soul, which is burdened because of the greatness of its way, is to be lightened by being led into a greater way, even in the highway of our God. We are to find a vital rest in larger communion. “O rest in the Lord!”

And we may assuredly expect to find rest in the Lord, because the Lord is the only home of the soul. When we turn to the Lord, it is going home. “Lord, Thou hast been our dwelling-place in all generations.”” Sometimes we send our tired, ailing folk to the locality where they were born, and where they spent their early days. We say that it will do them good to breathe their native air. They are like plants that have got away from their native zone and have become stunted in the uncongenial air, and they are now taken back again to their appropriate clime. And our God is the native climate of the soul. When we are away from Him, we are vagrants in uncongenial country. In Him we live and move and have our being. And when we breathe the heavenly air of His presence, the soul enjoys the restfulness of its own home. When the prodigal is in the Father’s house they begin to be merry.

And if the soul is at rest in the Lord all the powers of our being will respond to the quickening touch of our native air. That is surely the interpretation of the sacred fellowship of the Holy Ghost. When we arrive in that hallowed atmosphere the fruits of the Spirit begin to appear, and these fruits are just our spiritual powers which have been released and refined and made robust and gracious by the nourishing ministries of the divine grace. Every power lifts itself in its native air. ‘‘ All that is within me shall praise and bless Thy Holy Name.” Sleeping things awake. Withered things come to life. Arrested things reach out to new strength and beauty. The soul has found its rest, and in finding its rest it has discovered its inheritance. It finds its rest, and it then goes to school in the amazing ministry of the love and wisdom of God. ‘“* Come unto Me and I will give you rest!” ‘* Learn of Me and ye shall find rest!”