A GREAT GRIEF

  By A. W. Tozer

 
        I believe that our attitudes must be a great grief to God Himself, as He tries
to move us to praise and delight and devotion.

        I surely believe that it is the nature of God to delight in enthusiasm and I do
not refer to the extreme aspects of fanaticism.

        I refer back to the record concerning the warmth and brightness and enjoyment
of our Lord when He walked with us on this earth. I read and study and am assured
that the Lord Jesus Christ had a special fondness for the babies and the small
children and I think I know why.

        These little ones are always vigorous and buoyant and unsophisticated and
fresh. Their reactions are unmeditated, candid, and truth­ful. They do just what they
do out of simplicity showing the immediate response of their young hearts.

        Jesus called the children and laid His hands upon them and blessed them,
and then taught that "the kingdom of God belongs to such as these"  (Mark 10:14b).

        As a result, the theologians have been tossing that statement around ever since
wanting to know what it all means!

        The simple-hearted people knew that Jesus just loved the babies because they
were innocent and honest and unspoiled. They responded to Him and to His love
without stopping to consider and measure all of the consequences.

        A small child is never concerned with putting on a front as adults so often do
when they would like to have others believe that they are something more than they
really are.

        In his famous work on human conceit, Wordsworth pictures us when we are
born as coming down from the hand of God trailing clouds of glory. He shows a
little bit of heaven trailing around the growing boy.

        Then, as the lad travels farther and farther from home, sad and tragic as it
may be, the glory evaporates away and finally disappears. That little bit of heaven
that once surrounded the newborn boy disappears like dew before the sun, until
there is no longer any glory remaining.

        The lad becomes the man who has forgotten God. His heart is hard. He is a
carnal man, fallen and low, and the earth shuts completely around him.

        This is not the exceptional case; this is more likely to be the rule. How many in
our day are aware that there is this hard crust that is over our hearts, our beings-and
yet can never face it and confess it!

        Everyone who has come to the years of responsibility seems to have gone on
the defensive.  Even some of you who have known me for years are surely on the
defensive -- you have your guard up all the time!
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   Yours In Christ,
   Paul N. F.