GUIDANCE IN THE WAY
by Alexander Maclaren
'I being in the way, the Lord led me.' -- GENESIS
xxiv. 27.
So said Abraham's anonymous servant when telling
how he had found
Rebekah at the well, and known her to be the
destined bride of his
master's servant. There is no more beautiful page,
even amongst the
many lovely ones in these ancient stories, than this
domestic idyll
of the mission of the faithful servant from far
Canaan across the
desert. The homely test by which he would determine
that the maiden
should be pointed out to him, the glimpse of
old-world ways at the
well, the gracious courtesy of the fair damsel, and
the simple
devoutness of the speaker, who recognises in what to
others were
trivial commonplaces God's guidance to the end which
He had
appointed, his recognition of the divine hand moving
beneath all the
nothings and littlenesses of daily life--may teach
us much.
1. The first thing that these words seem to me to
suggest is the
conditions under which we may be sure that God
leads--'I being in
the way.'
Now, of course, some of you may know that the words
of our text are,
by the Revised Version and others, rendered so as to
obliterate the
clause telling where the speaker was when the Lord
led him, and to
make the whole a continuous expression of the one
fact--'As for me,
the Lord hath led me in the way to the house of my
master's
brethren.' The literal rendering is, 'I in the way,
Jehovah led me.'
No doubt the Hebrew idiom admits of the 'I' being
thus emphatically
premised, and then repeated as 'me' after the verb,
and possibly no
more is to be made of the words than that. But the
fuller and more
impressive meaning is possible, and I venture to
retain it, and to
see in it the expression of the truth that it is
when we are 'in the
way' that God will certainly lead us.
So that suggests, first, how the people that have
any right to
expect any kind of guidance from God are those who
have their feet
upon a path which conscience approves. Many men run
into all manner
of perplexities by their own folly and self-will,
and never ask
whether their acts are right or wrong, wise or
foolish, until they
begin to taste the bitter consequences. Then they
cry to God to help
them, and think themselves very religious because
they do. That is
not the way to get God's help. Such folk are like
Italian brigands
who had an image of the Virgin in their hats, and
sometimes had the
Pope's commission in their pockets, and therefore
went out to murder
and ravish, in sure and certain hope of God's favour
and protection.
But when we are 'in the way,' and know that we are
doing what we
ought to do, and conscience says, 'Go on; never mind
what stands
against you,' it is then, and only then, that we
have a right to be
sure that the Lord will lead us. Otherwise, the best
thing that can
happen to us is that the Lord should thwart us when
we are on the
wrong road. Resistance, indeed, may be guidance; and
it is often
God's manner of setting our feet in the way of His
steps. We have no
claim on Him for guidance, indeed, unless we have
submitted
ourselves to His commandments; yet His mercies go
beyond our claims.
Just as the obedient child gets guidance, so the
petulant and
disobedient child gets resistance, which is guidance
too. The angel
of the Lord stands in front of Balaam, amongst the
vines, though the
seer sometimes does not see, and blocks the path for
him, and hedges
up the way with his flaming sword. Only, if we would
have the sweet,
gracious, companionable guidance of our Lord, let us
be sure, to
begin with, that we are 'in the way,' and not in any
of the bypaths
into which arrogance and self-will and fleshly
desires and the like
are only too apt to divert our feet.
Another consideration suggested by these words, 'I
being in the
way,' is that if we expect guidance we must
diligently do present
duty. We are led, thank God, by one step at a time.
He does with His
child, whom He is teaching to read His will, as we
sometimes do with
our children, when we are occupied in teaching them
their first
book-learning: we cover the page up, all but the
line that we want
them to concentrate their eyes upon; and then, when
they have got to
the end of that, slip the hand down, low enough to
allow the next
line to come into view. So often God does with us.
One thing at a
time is enough for the little brains. And this is
the condition of
mortal life, for the most part--though there do come
rare
exceptions. Not that we have to look a long way
ahead, and forecast
what we shall do this time ten years off, or to make
decisions that
involve a distant future--except once or twice in a
lifetime--but
that we have to settle what is to be done in this
flying minute, and
in the one adjacent to it. 'Do the duty that lies
nearest thee,' and
the remoter duty will become clearer. There is
nothing that has more
power to make a man's path plain before his feet
than that he should
concentrate his better self on the manful and
complete discharge of
the present moment's service. And, on the other
hand, there is
nothing that will so fill our sky with mists, and
blur the marks of
the faint track through the moor, as present
negligence, or still
more, present sin. Iron in a ship's hull makes the
magnet tremble,
and point away from its true source. He that has
complied with evil
to-day is the less capable of discerning duty
to-morrow; and he that
does all the duty that he knows will thereby
increase the
probability that he will know all that he needs. 'If
any man wills
to do His will, he shall know of the
teaching'--enough, at any rate,
to direct his steps.
But there is another lesson still in the words; and
that is that, if
we are to be guided, we must see to it that we
expect and obey the
guidance.
This servant of Abraham's, with a very imperfect
knowledge of the
divine will, had, when he set out on his road,
prayed very earnestly
that God would lead him. He had ventured to
prescribe a certain
token, naive in its simplicity: 'If the girl drops
her pitcher, and
gives us drink gladly, and does not grudge to fill
the troughs for
the cattle, that will show that she is of a good
sort, and will make
the right wife for Isaac.' He had prayed thus, and
he was ready to
accept whomsoever God so designated. He had not made
up his mind,
'Bethuel's daughter is a relation of my master's,
and so she will be
a suitable wife for his son.' He left it all with
God, and then he
went straight on his road, and was perfectly sure
that he would get
the guidance that he had sought. And when it came
the good man bowed
and obeyed.
Now there is a picture for us all. There are many
people that say,
'O Lord! guide me.' when all the while they mean,
'Let me guide
Thee.' They are perfectly willing to accept the
faintest and moat
questionable indications that may seem to point down
the road where
their inclination drives them, and like Lord Nelson
at Copenhagen,
will put the telescope to the blind eye when the
flag is flying at
the admiral's peak, signalling 'Come out of action,'
because they
are determined to stay where they are.
Do not let us forget that the first condition of
securing real
guidance in our daily life is to ask it, and that
the next is to
look for it, and that a third is to be quite willing
to accept it,
whether the finger points down the broad road that
we would like to
go upon, or through some tangled path amongst the
brushwood that we
would fain avoid. And if you and I, dear brethren,
in the
littlenesses of our daily life, do fulfil these
conditions, the
heavens will crumble, and earth will melt, before
God will leave His
child untaught in the way in which he should go.
Only, let us be patient. Do you remember what Joshua
said to the
Israelites? 'Let there be a good space of vacant
ground between you
and the guiding ark, that you may know by which way
you ought to
go.' When men precipitately press on the heels of
half-disclosed
providences, they are uncommonly apt to mistake the
road. We must
wait till we are sure of God's will before we try to
do it. If we
are not sure of what He would have us do, then, for
the present, He
would have us do nothing until He speaks. 'I being
in the way, the
Lord led me.'
2. Now a word about the manner of the guidance.
There was no miracle, no supernatural voice, no
pillar of cloud or
fire, no hovering glory round the head of the
village maiden. All
the indications were perfectly natural and trivial.
A thousand girls
had gone to the wells that day all about Haran and
done the very
same things that Rebekah did. But the devout man who
had prayed for
guidance, and was sure that he was getting it, was
guided by her
most simple, commonplace act; and that is how we are
usually to be
guided. God leaves a great deal to our common sense.
His way of
speaking to common sense is by very common things.
If any of us
fancy that some glow at the heart, some sudden flash
as of
inspiration, is the test of a divine commandment, we
have yet to
learn the full meaning of the Incarnation of Jesus
Christ. For that
Incarnation, amongst all its other mighty
influences, hallowed the
commonest things of life and turned them into
ministers of God's
purposes. So remember, God's guidance may come to
you through so
insignificant a girl as Rebekah. It may come to you
through as
commonplace an incident as tipping the water of a
spring out of an
earthen pot into a stone trough. None the less is it
God's guidance;
and what we want is the eye to see it. He will guide
us by very
common indications of His providence.
3. And now, the last thing that I would say a word
about is the
realisation in daily life of this guidance as a
plain actual fact.
This anonymous trusted servant of Abraham's, whose
name we should
like to have known, had a mere segment of the full
orb of the
knowledge of God that shines upon our path. With
true Oriental
freedom to speak about the deepest matters, he was
not afraid nor
ashamed to stand before Bethuel and Laban, and all
these other
strangers that crowded round the doorway, and say,
'The Lord led
me.' There is a pattern for some of us tongue-tied,
shamefaced
Christians. Whatever may be the truth about the
degradations of
which heathen religion is full, there is a great
deal in heathen
religion that ought to teach, and does teach,
Christendom a lesson,
as to willingness to recognise and to confess God's
working in daily
life. It may be very superficial; it may be very
little connected
with high morality; but so far as it goes it is a
thousand-fold
better than the dumb religion that characterises
such hosts of
Christian people.
A realisation of the divine guidance is the talisman
that makes
crooked things straight and rough places plain; that
brings peace
and calmness into our hearts, amid all changes,
losses, and sorrows.
If we hold fast by that faith, it will interpret for
us the
mysterious in the providences concerning our own
lives, and will
help us to feel that, as I said, resistance to our
progress may be
true guidance, and thwarting our wills may be our
highest good. For
the road which we travel should, in all its
turnings, lead us to
God; and whatsoever guides us to Him is only and
always blessed.
May I, for one moment, turn these words in another
direction, and
remind you, dear friends, of how the sublimest
application of them
is still to be realised? As a climber on a
mountain-peak may look
down the vale up which he had painfully toiled for
many days and see
the dusty path lying, like a sinuous snake, down all
along it, so,
when we get up yonder, 'Thou shalt remember all the
way by which the
Lord thy God hath led thee these many years in the
wilderness,' and
shalt see the green pastures and the still waters,
valleys of the
shadow of death, and burning roads with sharp
flints, which have all
brought thee hither at last. We shall know then what
we believe now,
that the Lord does indeed go before them who desire
to follow Him,
and that the God of Israel is their reward. Then we
shall say with
deepened thankfulness, deepened by complete
understanding of life
here, seen in the light of its attained end, 'I
being in the way,
the Lord led me,' and 'I shall dwell in the house of
the Lord for
ever.'
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