August 5

Help in Time of Need

Having eyes, see ye not? ... Do ye not remember — Mark 8:18

There is nothing unreasonable in expecting a man with two eyes, when walking through an art gallery, to see the beautiful pictures that hang upon the walls. Why were his eyes given to him, if he is not to see with them? And it was nothing unreasonable that our Lord looked for when He expected the disciples to understand His spiritual teachings. They had eyes with which they might have seen spiritual things, yet they failed to use them. “Having eyes, see ye not?”

Many people never learn to see much with their natural eyes. They walk over the fields in summer days and never see a lovely thing; while in every wild flower and in every grass blade there is beauty enough, if perceived, to fill the dullest heart with rapture. It is still more true in spiritual things: we walk in a world full of the glories of God’s love; yet how much do we see of this ineffable splendour? At best, in this world we see only through a glass, darkly. Should we not train our eyes to see?

Then there was another wonderful faculty which the disciples did not use. This was memory. “Do ye not remember?” They did remember the facts of the miracles very definitely, but the spiritual lessons they did not recall. They had forgotten the spiritual meaning of the miracle. This is the way all of us are too apt to do: we remember the things God has done for us in the past, but we fail to draw the lessons from these experiences which they are meant to teach us; we fail to profit by the experience. Every deliverance in time of danger, every help in time of need, ought to write upon our hearts its new lesson on trusting in the Lord. When we come again to similar points of need or danger, we ought not to be afraid, but, remembering how God helped us before, should believe that He will give us the same help in the new experiences.