13.02 The eternal compassion
II. THE ETERNAL COMPASSION
“What man of you having a hundred sheep, and having lost one of them, doth not leave the ninety and nine?” The contrast of the numbers ninety and nine and one is only meant to heighten the emphasis laid on the importance in the eyes of the shepherd of the one that was lost. To us, familiar as we are with the masses of people gathered especially in our great cities, wandering through all the sins and sorrows, the hopes and fears, the love and labour of human life “as sheep without a shepherd,” it is more natural to think of leaving the one in safety to seek the ninety and nine that are lost. But that is not our Lord’s point.
He wishes simply to bring out the care of the shepherd for each single sheep. More and more, as we grow in care for our own life and for the lives of our fellows, we learn to stay ourselves upon the great truth that God’s knowledge and love of each single soul is absolute. “Are not five sparrows sold for two farthings? and not one of them is forgotten in the sight of God. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not: ye are of more value than many sparrows.” It is of all truths the most certain: for God would not be God unless it were true. He would not be infinite in knowledge or love unless He knew with absolute completeness and loved with absolute intensity every single soul. And it is of all truths the most sustaining.
It means that any solitary soul who at any time and in any part of the world has wandered from its true good is marked and missed and wanted by Almighty God.
Place yourself in imagination in the centre of a great city, say in a crowded street in East London, watch the stream of lives, toil-worn and anxious, or noisy and lighthearted, as it flows past you; note the children, on whose faces the coming shadows have not yet fallen, the laughing lads and girls keeping the shadows at bay by the boisterousness of their animal spirit, the working men and harassed women with their looks of either good-humoured patience or sullen endurance: think of all the histories of love and hope, of struggle and sorrow which lie behind these fleeting faces, half hidden by them and half revealed. Is there not here a pathos which would be too poignant in its appeal unless one’s own answering pity were but a feeble reflection of the infinite pity in the heart of the Eternal? Imagine, somewhere withdrawn from this busy scene; in a garret perhaps in some back street, a young girl tasting alone the bitterness of the dregs of that cup of sin which when she first put it to her lips was bright and sparkling. Then remember that this single strayed child of His is to the Eternal God as the one sheep that was lost to the watchful shepherd. To think of our own lives have there not been moments in the experiences of most of us when the sense of loneliness was borne in upon the soul the sense that, after all, our life stands apart, its burden of sin or sorrow or longing unknown and unshared by others? These are the very moments when faith can reveal to us one eye that sees, one heart that understands, one hand that touches with sympathy and strength the eye, the heart, the hand of the Eternal Compassion. To God everything in this universe, from the flower in the open field to the human soul in the mysteries of love and pain, is known both in its relation to all other things and in its own separate significance; and in each aspect known with a perfect knowledge which is one with a perfect love. If there is a God at all, we cannot believe less. Since there is a God, need we ask for more? Yet it is more that He gives.
TAGS: [Parables]