George H. Morrison - Devotional Sermons

Devotional For

March 3

      The Restfulness of Christ
      
      Then he arose, and rebuked the winds and the sea; and there was a great calm--Mat 8:26
      
      People Who Provide an Atmosphere of Restfulness
      
      There are some people we meet who impress us with a sense of restfulness. Such people, not infrequently, are men; more often, if I mistake not, they are women. They are not necessarily brilliant, nor have they any striking or unusual gifts: all we feel is that in their company there is a pleasant atmosphere of restfulness. We are all tempted to strain after effect sometimes, but in the presence of these people we do not think of that. There is no effort to keep up conversation. We are not ashamed even of being silent. Like a breath of evening after the garish day, when coolness and quiet have followed on the sunshine, such natures, often we know not how, enwrap us with a sweet sense of rest.
      
      And you will find, as your survey of life broadens, that people who are weak never create that atmosphere. There may be many vices in the strong, but there is always something unrestful in the weakling. We talk of the restfulness of the calm summer evening, and unhappy is the man who never feels it. But we know now how at the back of that there is the stress of conflict and the strain of battle. And so in the people who are full of restfulness, could we but read the story of their lives, we should find the record of many a hard battle, and the tale of many a well-contested field. I do not mean that they have done great deeds. I do not mean that they have suffered terribly. The greatest victories are not spectacular, nor is there any crowd to cheer the combatant. I only mean that people who are restful are people who have looked facts in the face; who have toiled, when there was not much light to toil by, and carried their crosses in a smiling way. There is never any rest in weakness. To be weak is miserable, doing or suffering, says Milton. The condition of all restfulness is power of the open-eyed and quiet, heroic kind. And probably that is why people who are restful are at the same time delightfully subduing; for there is nothing that so subdues a man as power, save the apotheosis of power, which is love.
      
      The Restfulness of Jesus
      
      Now no man can reasonably doubt that Jesus was pre-eminently restful. Whenever I peruse the Gospel story, I am impressed by the restfulness of Christ. One of the first invitations which He gave was this: "Come unto me...and I will give you rest." One of the last promises before the cross was this: "My peace I give unto you." And though there are depths in the peace of Jesus Christ that reach to the deepest abysses of the soul, yet the words would have been little else than mockery had the Christ not been wonderfully restful. Take a word like that of the Apostle Paul: "The Lord of peace himself give you peace always." Down to the depths of the sin-pardoned soul you are still in the province of the benediction. But there never could have been that benediction unless the Lord, whom the church loved and worshipped, had impressed everyone who ever met Him with the feeling of an infinitude of rest.
      
      Craving for Restfulness
      
      And I cannot help thinking that if men realized that, it would constitute a new appeal for Christ. If I know anything about this present day, there is a craving in its heart for restfulness. Mr. Moody used to tell a story of a little child who was tossing and fretting in some childish fever. And its mother sang to it and told it stories, and the little child tossed and was fretful still. And then the mother stooped down without a word and gathered her little daughter in her arms, whereon the child, in an infinite content, said, "Ah, mother, that's what I wanted." She did not know what she wanted, like many wiser people; but like most of us she knew it when she got it. And so today there are a thousand voices singing to us, and some perhaps telling stories. But it seems to me that the times are a little fevered, that the pulse is not beating steadily like our fathers', and that what we need in modern society is just the shadow and the space of rest. The strenuous life is being overdone. It is a little too strenuous to be strong. It is issuing, not in the dignity of manhood, but in the hustle of the modern market. And wise men everywhere are coming to see that we need a new ideal not less intense, but one that has ampler room within its borders for the fructifying pleasantness of rest.
      
      Rest for Those Whose Burden Is Religion
      
      It is just here that, out of the mist of ages, there steps the figure of the Man of Nazareth. "Come unto me...and I will give you rest"--it is the message of Jesus for today. I want you to remember that these words were spoken to men and women whose burden was religion. It was the spirit of the age, charged with religion. It was the spirit of the age, charged with tradition, from which our Savior offered them relief. And once again the spirit of the age demands an ideal that shall have room for rest, and standing among us is the restful Christ. But the continual wonder about Christ is this, that in every part and power of His being He was intensely and unceasingly alive with a vitality which puts us all to shame. Let a woman touch Him in the throng--"Who touched me?" Let Him see a crowd, and He is "moved with compassion." Let Him be baited by the subtlest doctors, and He fences and parries with superb resource. In body and spirit, in will, emotion, intellect, Christ was so flooded with the tides of life, that when He cried to men, "I am the Life," they felt in a moment that the word was true. Yet, "Come unto me...and I will give you rest." That is the abiding mystery of Christliness. That is the secret we are hungering for today, how to engraft the strenuous on the restful. And you may laboriously search the ages, and all the ideals and visions of the ages, and never find these so perfectly combined as in the historic personality of Jesus. The East says, "Come let us rest awhile; no need to hurry, and the sun is warm." And the West says, "Let us be up and doing," till we have almost lost the forest for the trees. And then comes Jesus, most superbly active, and toiling with an inspired assiduity, and yet in the very thick and tangle of it, girt with a restfulness that is divine.
      
      Christ's Restfulness Was the Restfulness of Balance
      
      Now when we study the life of Jesus Christ, we light on one or two sources of this restfulness. And in the first place it was the restfulness of balance. You remember how John in the Book of Revelation has a vision of the heavenly Jerusalem; and you remember how, as he surveys its form, he sees that the length and the breadth and the height of it are equal. It was symmetrical in every measurement--perfectly balanced in every dimension, and I challenge any man to read the Gospel and not remark that equipoise in Christ. We talked of Bismarck as the man of iron, but we never talk of the iron will of Christ. We speak of the myriad-mindedness of Shakespeare, but we do not speak in that fashion about Jesus. And it is not reverence that keeps us silent, nor is it any awe at present deity; it is rather that everything is in such perfect poise there, that the total impression is repose. It is the same in the highest works of art. In the noblest art there is always a great restfulness. Passion is there, and energy, and power, as there are passion and power in the sunrise. But the mark of genius is the mark of God, that it brings the warring forces into balance, and holds its energies in such a poise that the impression of the whole is rest. It is not the enthusiast who is most like Christ, no matter how fiery his ardor be. It is not the man whose feelings are the tenderest. It is not the man who has a will of steel. Ethically, that man is most tike Christ who has so lived with Him under the love of God that every part and power of his being has opened out like a flower to the sun. That, then, is one of the ethical sources of what I call the restfulness of Christ. Ill-balanced men always make us restless; ill-balanced women do so as well. But to me at least, reading the life of Jesus, there comes such a sense of powers in perfect balance, that I accept the invitation, "Come unto me...and I will give you rest" with all my heart.
      
      Jesus' Restfulness Is the Restfulness of Purpose
      
      Again it is the restfulness of purpose--of steady and unalterable purpose. There is no rest in the little Highland stream as it brawls and chafes along its bed of granite. It "chatters, chatters as it goes," and chattering things and people are not restful. But the mighty river, silent and imperial, guiding its wealth of water to the sea, is like a parable of mighty purpose, and in the bosom of that purpose there is rest. There is something river-like about the life of Christ--it is so resistless in its flow. Sorrows or joys could no more stop His course than the lights and shadows on the hills can stop the Clyde. And in this mighty purpose, so deep and so divine, there lies not a little of the secret of the unfailing restfulness of Christ. Why is it that young men are so restless? And why is there generally more repose as life advances? It is not merely that the fires are cooling; it is that life is settling into a steadier aim. No longer do we beat at doors that will not open--no longer does every bypath suggest dreams--we have found our work and we have strength to do it, and in that concentration there is rest. Now in the life of Jesus Christ there is always the beat of underlying purpose. No life was so free or so happily spontaneous. To call it cribbed, cabined, and confined would be mockery. Yet underneath its gladness and its reach, and all the splendor and riches of its liberty, there is a burning and dominating purpose, and in the bosom of that purpose is repose. It is a bad thing not to have a friend. It is a worse thing not to have a purpose. Something to love, to fight for, and to live for, in the heat of the battle keeps a man at rest. And Jesus had the world to love and fight for, and the world's redemption to achieve on Calvary, and I say that that, in the midst of all the tumult, was the strain of music whose echo was repose.
      
      Jesus' Restfulness Is That of Trust
      
      Then lastly it was the restfulness of trust. Christ had repose because He trusted so. Faithlessness, even in the relationships of earth, is the lean and hungry mother of unrest. Let a mistress once distrust her maid, and there will be worrying suspicion everyday. Let a husband distrust his wife, a wife her husband, and the peace of home, sweet home, is in ashes. We charge this with being a restless age, and we lay the blame of that restlessness on love of pleasure, but I question if it be not lack of faith that is the true root of social instability. To me the wildest little child is restful, and it is restful because it trusts me so. Faith is the great rebuke of boisterous winds when the ship is likely to be swamped in angry waters. And the perfect restfulness of Jesus Christ, in a life of unceasing movement and demand, sprung from a trust in God that never faltered even amid the bruising of the cross.