The Comforting Spot in Memory

“I call to remembrance my song in the night.” — Ps. lxxvii. 6.

There are three sources of comfort in the hour of sorrow — the future, the present, and the past. The comfort of the future is anticipation — the looking forward to better things. The comfort of the present is strength — the support of an invisible hand. The comfort of the past is memory — a recalling of the experience of former days. The psalmist is here speaking of the last of these. It is interesting to observe where he thinks the special comfort of memory to lie. He does not seek it where I should expect him to seek it. I should 9xpect him to recall life’s unclouded days, to bring up to remembrance whatever moments he has had of unqualified joy. He does not. On the contrary, he seeks the proof of Divine help by going back not to his bright, but to his chequered, hours, ‘* I call to remembrance my song in the night.” What he says is this, ‘* Your best comfort from memory is not the recalling of days when you had no cloud, 27sr

but the recalUng of days when you had mingled cloud and sunshine — the memory that the song could exist in the sorrow.” Why is the memory of these chequered moments the psalmist’s best comfort in tribulation? It is because they reveal a phase of God’s presence which is not revealed by the remembrance of unqualified joy. If I am in grief, I would rather remember that God once rescued me than that He once regaled me. If I am lying among the thorns, it is no great solace to know that yesterday God laid me among the flowers; if that were all, it might mean that He can only love the beautiful. But if I can remember how, when yesterday I lay among the thorns, He planted flowers beside me — if I can remember that His song came to me at the very moment when the pulse of life beat low, then indeed I get from retrospect a unique revelation — God’s presence in calamity. Every Jew believed in His presence outside calamity. Every son of Israel recognised His favour in man’s song and His absence in man’s night. But the psalmist wants more. He wants to feel that the night may itself have a song, that the cloud may itself have a bow, that the thorn may itself be environed by a rose. God’s glory to him is His presence in the gloom. Lord, I am grateful for the memory of green 273 s pastures and quiet waters; but in the hour of sorrow my comfort is another remembrance — Thy rod in the path that is rugged, Thy staff in the waters that are not still. Methinks when I look back I never see Thee so clearly as in Thy coming with clouds; Thou art brightest against a dark ground. I do not say that I have never failed to find an explanation; but I have never failed to find a rod and a staff. The comfort of memory is not that I have traced my sorrows, but that I have sustained my sorrows. In looking back I do not always see my emergence from the shadow; but I can always see that there was support in the shadow. How do I know that Thy rod and Thy staff were with me? Simply because I did not die. My retrospective marvel is just that I have got through. I do not understand how I have got through. I only know that my own strength could not have done it, that my own unaided steps could not have done it. Something must have kept me up. Something must have helped me to walk through the valley of the shadow. It was Thy rod and Thy staff, O Lord. It is this which makes the dearest spot in my memory the valley of the shadow itself — not the pastures green, not the still waters. In the pastures green Thou wert with me in my greatness; by the still waters Thou 274

wert with me in my strength. But in the valley of the shadow Thou wert with me in my weakness. It was a meeting of extremes. Thy mercy came to my meanness; Thy power came to my poverty; Thy hand came to my heaviness; Thy bracing came to my burden; Thy song came to my sigh; Thy life came to my lowliness; Thy radiance came to my rags; Thy glory came to my grief. The most comforting spot to me will always be the valley where I heard Thy song.

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