The Bitter Waters Sweetened
THREE days of torrid and thirsty travel from the Red Sea brought the children of Israel to a fountain in the desert. All rush forward eagerly for a cooling draught. But alas! the waters are so bitter that neither man nor beast can drink them. The disappointing spring is at once named by the murmuring Israelites, Mar ah, which signifies the waters of “bitterness.”
To this day a fountain is known (about seventeen hours’ travel from the “wells of Moses “), which the Arabs still call Howara. It is supposed by many geographers to be the identical spring of Marah, for its waters are exceedingly brackish. Prof. Stanley of Oxford mentions a spring a short distance south of Howara which “was so bitter that neither men nor camels could dx’ink it.”
Beside one of these two fountains of bitterness stood the great host of thirsty Israel, with a terrible bitterness of disappointment in their hearts. They cry out against God. The deliverance at the Eed Sea is forgotten. Past mercies are lost sight of, and present griefs seem to stir up all the acrid humors within them. They murmur against Moses, and exclaim despairingly, “What shall we drink 1”
Fellow-pilgrims to the promised land, how exactly this scene tallies with our own experiences! Eight after happy days of prosperity and mercy, we come suddenly upon a Marah of bitter disappointment. We had set our hearts upon some favorite project. Perhaps we were going on a long-coveted tour, and had made all our arrangements. But the day for the departure finds us on a sick-bed; and the medicine we swallow is not half so hard to take as the disappointment. Selfishness murmurs and chafes under the trial. But presently we begin to see that this bed of sickness lay right on the road to Canaan. We begin to talk with our own hearts, and to think over our past lives. We begin to pray with a newhunger of soul, and to read God’s promises with new eyes. We make fresh covenant with God, that, if He will restore us to health, we will use it for Him, and will walk more closely with Him. We take up one precious promise after another, and drop it into the fountain of trial, and lo! the waters begin to taste sweeter to us! Prayer becomes sweeter, and Christ’s presence sweeter, and something within us whispers, “After all, is not this better for us than the journey to Europe or to the mountains 1 Is it not good for me that I have been shut up here with Jesus 1”
Now this was just what happened to angry and disappointed Israel. The Lord showed to Moses a tree, which, when he had cast it into the fountain, made the waters to become so sweet that the whole host drank of them with delight. I doubt whether God created that tree miraculously; he simply “showed” it to Moses. So God does not create a Bible or a mercy-seat, or an atonement, or a jewelcasket of promises, or supplies of grace, especially for us. His Spirit simply opens our eyes to see them, and our hearts to enjoy them. He reveals to us the tree of healing which turns a draught of bitterness into a draught of holy joy. Thus, —
“Trials make the promise sweet,
Trials give new life to prayer,
Bring me to the Saviour’s feet,
Lay me low, and keep me there.”
It is delightful to sit down beside a child of God who has in his hand a bitter cup of trial, but the “sweet breath of Jesus” has turned the bitterness into such a blessing that he “tastes the love” of Jesus in every drop.
1 love to hear old Richard Baxter exclaim, after a life of constant suiFering, “O my God! I thank Thee for a bodily discipline of eight-and-fifty years.”
I love to sit down by Harlan Page and hear him say, “A bed of pain is a precious place, when we have the presence of Christ. God does not send one unnecessary affliction. Lord! I thank thee for suffering. I deserve it. I deserve death eternal. Let me not complain or dictate. I commit myself to thee, O Saviour, and to thy infinite love. 1 stop my mouth, and lie low beside thee!” So God built up that blood-bought soul faster than disease was pulling down the frail tenement in which it dwelt. And through the rents heaven’s glory shone in with rapturous radiance!
I suppose there is rarely a Marah on earth more bitter than that which a father or mother reaches, when they bend over the coffin which holds the darling of their hearts and home. In all God’s chemistry, is there any solvent which can sweeten such a draught of disappointment ]
Yes, there is! I have now before me a tear-moistened letter from my beloved brother
W, the superintendent of the famous
B Sabbath school. It was written by the
waters of Marah. But mark how the angel of love is letting fall the sweetening leaves into the fountain. Brother W writes: —
“Our darling Hattie was another of God’s beautiful things, wise beyond her years, more like a sister to us older ones, than like a little child. On the last Sabbath morning that she came to the breakfast table, she had, as usual, her text; but it was a new one to her. ‘Hide me under the shadow of Thy wing.’ God heard the little tired body’s prayer, and gathered the lamb to His bosom. We watched and watched beside her; and when all others had given her up, I was still hopeful, and taking the physician aside I inquired, ‘Doctor, will she wake up, do you think? ‘His reply almost killed me as he covered his face and sobbed the answer, ‘No: not till she wakes in heaven!’ O my brother! I cannot tell you the anguish of that moment. I sat in the shadow of our great afihction, dumb. But Christ Jesus, the man of sorrows, was acquainted with my grief. He put his everlasting arm around me, — the friend that sticketh closer than a brother. Unto those that be-Heve, he is precious; and never more so than when he brings heaven close up to us.”
Beautiful words of a victorious soul! j send them through these pages as a bougi from the tree of experience, to sweeten the fountain of bitterness beside which many of my readers may be sitting to-day. If God’s grace can make the waters of trial so sweet on earth, what will the fountain he in heaven f