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The Bruised Reed and the Flickering Candle By John MacDuff
From Grace Gems - Free and Public Domain:
Very Old - But Beautiful and Timeless Treasures.
Grace Gems!
___________________________________________
The Bruised Reed and the Flickering Candle By John MacDuff
From Grace Gems - Free and Public Domain:
Very Old - But Beautiful and Timeless Treasures.
Grace Gems!
___________________________________________
The Bruised Reed and the Flickering Candle
by John MacDuff
"Comfort, comfort My people!" says your God. Isaiah 40:1
"A bruised reed he will not break, and a flickering candle he will not snuff out!" Isaiah 42:3
No verse in this beautiful chapter, nor in this "Book of Comfort," is more comforting than this. God has His strong ones in His Church — His oaks of Bashan and cedars of Lebanon; noble forest trees, spreading far and wide their branches of faith and love and holiness — those who are deeply rooted in the truth, able to wrestle with fierce tempests of unbelief, and to grapple with temptations in their sterner forms.
But He has His weaklings and His saplings also — those that require to be tenderly shielded from the blast, and who are liable, from constitutional temperament, to become the prey of doubts and fears, to which the others are total strangers. Sensitive in times of trial, irresolute in times of difficulty and danger, unstable in times of severe temptation; or it may be in perpetual disquietude and alarm about their spiritual safety. To such, the loving ways and dealings of the Savior are thus unfolded, "A bruised reed shall He not break, and the flickering candle shall He not snuff out." Let us proceed to note the beauty and significance of the twofold figure.
(1.) The bruised reed. The reed, or "calamus," is a plant with hollow stem, which grew principally by the side of lakes or rivers. Those who have been in Palestine are familiar with it in the tangled thickets which still line the shores of the ancient lake Gennesaret, or, above all, in the dense thicket fringing the banks of the Jordan. The plant might well be taken as an emblem of whatever was weak, fragile, brittle. The foot of the wild beast which made its lair in the jungle — trampled it to pieces. Its slender stalk bent or snapped under the weight of the bird that sought to make it a perch. The wind and hail-storm shivered its delicate tubes, or laid them prostrate on the ground.
"A reed shaken by the wind," was the metaphor employed by One, whose eyes, in haunts most loved and frequented by Him — had ofttimes gazed on this significant emblem of human weakness and instability.
Once broken, it was rendered of no use. Other stems which had been bent by the hurricane might, by careful nursing and tending, be recovered; but the reed, once shattered, became worthless. In a preceding chapter (Isaiah 36:6) it is thus spoken of as an emblem of tottering, fragile Egypt, "Lo you trust in the staff of this broken reed — on Egypt, whereon, if a man leans — it will go into his hand and pierce it!"
Some have considered that a reference is made, in the present passage, to the reeds which the shepherds of old used in their rustic pipes on the hills of Canaan. One of these reeds — bruised, split, or broken, would make the whole instrument discordant. We may imagine David playing on such an instrument in the valleys of Bethlehem, before he got his golden harp on Mount Zion. He would probably fashion that mountain-pipe with his own hands — plucking the reeds from some watercourse among the hills of Judah as he was watching his father's sheep, and using it as an accompaniment to "the Lord's song." But if one of the tubes had received an injury, what would he do? He would never think of repairing it; but taking the instrument to pieces, he would throw the mutilated and bruised reed away, and meander down to the ample reed-forest in the valley, to insert a new one.
'Not such' says Christ, 'are my dealings with any of my people, who may be broken with convictions of sin, and wounded in conscience — I will not break the bruised reed!' Or rather, as that negative assertion is the Hebrew way of conveying a strong affirmative — it is equivalent to saying, that He will bind up the broken heart, that He will cement the splintered stem of the hanging bulrush, endowing it with new life and strength and vigor, causing it to "spring up among the grass, as willows by the watercourses" — that He will pardon, pity, comfort, relieve!
Look at that same sweet Psalmist of Israel: who was more a "bruised reed" than he? God had inspired his soul — made it a many-stringed instrument in discoursing His praise; but now it lies a broken mutilated thing, with the stain of crimson guilt upon it — tuneless and silent. "I kept silence," says he, "my bones waxed old through my roaring all the day long. For day and night Your hand was heavy upon me, my moisture is turned into the drought of summer." Does God desert him? does He cast the reed away, and seek to replace the void by another, worthier and better? Does He mock the cry of penitential sorrow, as through anguished tears that stricken one thus implored forgiveness, "Have mercy upon me, O God — according to Your loving-kindness! According to the multitude of Your tender mercy — blot out my transgression!"
No! Hear him detail his own experience,"I acknowledged my sin unto You, and my iniquity have I not hid; I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord — and You forgave the iniquity of my sin." And then he takes up the retuned instrument, and sings for the encouragement of others, "For this shall everyone that is godly pray unto You in a time when You may be found."
In the case of some aromatic plants — it is when bruised they give forth the sweetest fragrance. So, it is often the soul, crushed with a sense of sin — which sends forth the sweetest aroma of humility, gratitude, and love. "Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted."
(2.) The flickering candle. But, not only is it predicted of this coming Savior, that "the bruised reed He shall not break," it is added, "The wick (flickering candle) he will not snuff out." We may be warranted perhaps in taking this second metaphor to apply, not so much to those who are haunted with the remembrance of any special or presumptuous sin — as to those who gradually, perhaps almost imperceptibly, have suffered declension in spiritual things — who are mourning the general languor of their spiritual life, the deterioration or decay of their Christian graces. They hear others spoken of as being "strong in faith" — but their faith is not entitled to the name. They hear of others spoken of as ardent in love — but they cannot mock so noble and heavenly a grace by identifying it with their own. They read, in the case of others, of glowing ecstasies and holy experiences — but they are strangers to all such. If they have the retrospect of better times — now at all events, they can only tell of declension and backsliding. If they can revert to hallowed hours, which still linger, like a strain of far off music, in their memories — these have now only left behind them an aching void and gloomy silence.