Feeding His Flock

4 1 will feed My flock.’ — Ezekiel xxxiv. 15.

HQlE need to be fed. Even when we are born again we are only babes in Christ. We have got quality of life; we lack quantity, the forceful, irresistible, abundant life which filled to the full the channels of the Christ How are we going to gain the abundance? It is largely a matter of diet. ‘I will feed My flock, We are to be fed into maturity by the bread of life. But how various are the forms of bread which the gracious Providence employs 1 He suits the bread to the precise condition of our needs. ‘Thou givest them their meat in due season.’ Yes, ‘in due season; ’ at the right time the right kind of bread. The Lord’s feeding of His children is tenderly discriminating, and to bring us to maturity He uses very varied breads. Let us glance at two or three of the breads which are mentioned in the Sacred Word.

1. * I will feed thee in a good pasture,’ saith the Lord. Yes, sometimes that is the seasonable feeding-place for the soul. ‘He maketh me to lie down in green pastures,’ and there we should always like to remain. There are sweet and beautiful seasons, when life ceases to be a noisy tumultuous river, when it settles down into ‘still waters,’ and we are blessed with quiet visions which come as Heaven’s bread. The good Lord permits us at times to just lie down and dream. ‘Your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.’ Beautiful are these seasons of holy communion, when life becomes a river of stillness, and we contemplate the things which are divine. The Lord is feeding us in a ‘fat pasture, giving us meat in due season.

2. ‘I will feed thee with the bread of tears.’ That is another of the means by which I am to pass out of babyhood into manhood, out of initial straits into ’ the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.’ Tears as bread: I do not think it means the tears that we shed because of our own griefs, but tears shed because of the grief of others. These tears constitute bread, and enlarge our souls. Sympathy

is feeding. It has sometimes happened that a whole family has been fed by the presence of an invalid child. Tender tones have stolen into the voice; a strange gentleness has come into the hand; the loud, thoughtless tramp has gone out of the footfall j jangling has given place to a subdued harmony which has been like snatches from the songs above.’ The affections have been made more and more sensitive, responsive and vibrant to another’s grief. ‘When Jesus therefore saw her weeping, He groaned in the spirit, and was troubled.’ Our Saviour was being fed with ’ the bread of tears! ’

3. I will feed thee with ‘the bread of adversity ‘; not only with sympathy for the griefs of others, but with personal grief of thine own. The bread of hardness! Do we not all know the experience in common life? How often we say to one another, in describing some personal experience: ‘Yes, I felt it very hard.’ We were eating the bread of hardness. We were expecting soft and toothsome food, and lo, it became in our mouths as gravel. ‘To-morrow,’ we said, ’ we will sit down to a feast; ’ and when the morrow came, our table was spread with the bread of adversity. ‘We have toiled all night, and taken

nothing! ‘The bread of hardness I Endure hardness as good soldiers of Jesus Christ ‘; endure hardness, and so become still better soldiers of Jesus Christ.

‘I will feed My flock, The good Lord
has many breads. ‘Give us this day our
daily bread.’
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