Daily Devotionals

Music For the Soul

Devotional: January 20th

GOD’S FAITHFULNESS

Thy faithfulness reacheth unto the clouds. - Psalms 36:5

God’s faithfulness is in its narrowest sense His adherence to promises. It implies, in that sense, a verbal revelation, and definite words from Him pledging Him to a certain line of action. " He hath said, and shall He not do it?" He will not alter the thing that is gone out of His lips. It is only a God who has actually spoken to men who can be a "faithful God." He will not palter with a double sense, keeping His word of promise to the ear, and breaking it to the hope.

But not only His articulate promises, but also His own past actions, bind Him. He is always true to these, and not only continues to do as He has done, but discharges every obligation which His past imposes on Him. The ostrich was said to leave its eggs to be hatched in the sand; men bring men into positions of dependence, and then lightly shake the responsibility from careless shoulders. But God accepts the cares laid upon Him by His own acts, and discharges them to the last farthing. He is a "faithful Creator." Creation brings obligations with it; obligations on the creature; obligations on the Creator. If God makes a being, God is bound to take care of the being that He has made. If He makes a being in a given fashion. He is bound to provide for the necessities that He has created. According to the old proverb, "if He makes mouths, it is His business to feed them." And He recognizes the obligation. His past binds Him to certain conduct in His future. We can lay hold on the former manifestation, and we can plead it with Him. " Thou hast been, and therefore Thou must be." "Thou has taught me to trust in Thee; vindicate and warrant my trust by Thy unchangeableness " So His word, His acts, and His own nature bind God to bless and help. His faithfulness is the expression of His unchangeableness. "Because He could swear by no greater, He sware by Himself."

" Thy faithfulness reacheth to the clouds." Strange that the fixed faithfulness should be considered with reference to the very emblems of instability. The clouds are unstable; they whirl and melt and change. Strange to think of the unalterable faithfulness as reaching to them. May it not be that the very mutability of the mutable may be the means of manifesting the unalterable sameness of God’s faithful purpose, of His unchangeable love, and of His ever consistent dealings? May not the apparent incongruity be a part of the felicity of the bold words? Is it not true that earthly things, as they change their forms and melt away, leaving no track behind, phantom like as they are, do still obey the behests of that Divine faithfulness, and gather and dissolve, and break in the brief showers of blessing or short, sharp crashes of storm at the bidding of that steadfast purpose which works out one unalterable design by a thousand instruments, and changeth all things, being itself unchanged? The thing that is eternal, even the faithfulness of God, dwells amid it, and shows itself through the things that are temporal, the flying clouds of change.