And the Lord will create, upon every place of Mount Sion and where He is called upon, a cloud by day and a smoke and brightness of flaming fire in the night: for over all the glory shall be a protection.  And there shall be a tabernacle for a shade in the daytime from the heat, and for a security and covert from the whirlwind and from rain.         Isaias 4:5-6

 

The Risen Christ by Rembrandt

No man’s life runs smoothly and unbrokenly. 

To us all in God’s good time comes the constant interchange of light and shade, that perfects so well the great masterpiece we call our life.  Sorrow comes and joy rides close behind in the shadows.  Today we sit about our fireside and no darkness reigns in our little home, tomorrow the vacant chair tells once again its world-old story.  Life is a hard reality, at times a very hard reality, so hard that our poor hearts are affrighted at the gaunt vision of our own cheated dreams.   Childhood days pictured a fairyland where “grownups” moved and were wondrously happy, envied masters of themselves.  But childhood days have faded into the misty past and with them their fairyland and time has made life tell its own true changing story. 

Grief has long since burdened our faltering hearts:  grief for those that are with us no more; grief for the living whose wayward lives make it hard to check the ever-rising prayer that God had deigned long since to call them to Himself; grief for our own sad mistakes that maybe line all too closely our waning days.  But then as day drives back the night, joy, too has come:  the joy of well-merited success and the fullness of heart as we told our loved ones the long story of efforts crowned at last; the joy of father and mother as they watch their little ones growing into maturity, safe-shielded from the world’s dark shafts; the joy of holy men and women who have prevented the sun with their cloistered rising to praise their God and labor all day in the classroom or at the bedside of the sick, teaching souls to love the God who made them.

 

Life has its sorrows and life has its joys, too, but its sorrows will be all too heavy and its joys will be tainted and unsanctified unless we bring them one and all to the foot of the altar.  There is the tabernacle for a shade in the daytime from the heat, the daytime of pleasure when all is well with us and we are prone to forget our God, and “for a security and covert from the whirlwind and from rain,” and the darkness of trial and overburdening grief.  To us the Prophet Balaam speaks in ways beyond his knowing:  “How beautiful are thy tabernacles, O Jacob, and thy tents, O Israel” – the tabernacles where Emmanuel dwells, the tents where the Son of Man lingers yet a while – “as woody valleys, as watered gardens near the rivers, as tabernacles which the Lord hath pitched, as cedars by the waterside”!  There is our good Master, Rabboni, waiting for us in the dawn light a He waited of old for Magdalene; listening for our footfall at eventide, even as He listened for the knocking of the sick and the halt at His humble home in Galilee.  He will be to us “a cloud by day and a smoke and brightness of flaming fire in the night,” ever guiding, ever leading us on unswervingly to our home beyond the grave.

 

Jesus, gentle Saviour, God of wondrous forethought for those You love, life is all too strange a problem for me to face alone.  I need You for my guide, that I fail not in the dark and wander not in the noonday of my powers.  Be close to me, then, good Jesus, and leave me not alone.  I know You do not, but what I mean is, make me know, make me remember that You are with me always.  When the sun of life shines full, make me mindful of You, the Man of Sorrows, “who having joy set before Him endured the Cross, despising the shame” and when the night of grief steals from us the light we love so much, let me remember that this everyone is sure of that worshippeth Thee, that his life, if it be under trial, shall be crowned: and if it be under tribulation, it shall be delivered: and if it be under correction, it shall be allowed to come to mercy.  For Thou art not delighted in our being lost: because after a storm Thou makest a calm and after tears and weeping Thou pourest in joyfulness”

When all the world is comfortless,

And wrapped in gloom as black as night.

Remind me, Lord in my distress

One spot on earth is always bright

THE TABERNACLE.