"Trust His Heart"

    "As for God, His way is perfect" (II Samuel 22:31).

    Our Lord's standard of life and being beckons us to wonder and enraptured fascination.  We have no frame of reference for perfection in reference to His way.  Even more, however, we cannot fathom the pristine purity of character and nature that leads God to always act in the best possible manner.

    "Thou art good, and doest good" (Psalm 119:68).

    While perfect, God's ways often bewilder us because, again, we have no frame of reference for perfection.  Those of His actions which are exactly as they should and must be may seem strange and even misguided to our faulty understanding, senses, and expectations.  This behooves us to increasingly know His character and nature - "Thou art good" - in order to also know the perfection of His every action - "Thou doest good."  Or, as the saying goes, "When we cannot understand the Lord's hand, we must trust His heart."

   On a number of occasions in the Psalms, David cried out in confusion because God's actions - or inactions - troubled him.  "O my God, I cry in the daytime, but Thou hearest not, and in the night season, and am not silent.  But Thou art holy, O Thou that inhabitest the praises of Israel" (Psalm 22:2-3).  Clearly, David perceived that the Lord had turned a deaf ear to his pleas.  He could only reason that God remained still because He disregarded His child's cries for help.  This was not true, but it seemed true to the king of Israel.  David, however, fell back upon his remembrance and conviction of God's character - "But Thou art holy."  David seems to catch himself as he bemoans God's way, affirming the truth of God's "Who".  He determined to trust his Lord's heart when he could not understand His hand.

    We face many such challenges and opportunities.  The Divine way and the human perception thereof often conflict.  We thus do well to join David in remembrance of the perfection of the former, and the imperfection of the latter.  God can only act in perfection because He eternally exists in perfection.  His heart guides His hand, and the more we know the Biblical declaration of our Lord's pristinely pure character and nature, the more we will fall back in times of confusion to confess with our brother of old, "But Thou art holy!"

"He hath done all things well."

(Mark 7:37)

Weekly Memory Verse

    Who can understand his errors?  Cleanse thou me from secret faults.

(Psalm 19:12)