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 –– "Let the children come to me, for the
Kingdom of God belongs to such as they. Don't send them away! I tell
you as seriously as I know how that anyone who refuses to come to
God as a little child will never be allowed into his Kingdom."
                                                                                                           Mark 10: . . .14,15

        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.