Job 10:15

"Handfuls of Purpose"

For All Gleaners

"I am full of confusion." Job 10:15

This is a fact, and ought to be regarded seriously. Providence is often such as to bewilder our merely intellectual faculties. Things do not happen in the sequence which we have determined. We seem, for the moment, at least, to sow one thing and reap another. All our calculations are upset as to the prosperity of virtue and the degradation of vice. We make bold to prophesy what will happen tomorrow in the order of God's providence; we say, The wicked man will return from his attempts worsted and ashamed, and yet he comes in successful and glorying in his abundant prosperity. Being full of confusion, we should ( a ) wait; ( b ) take an appointed course of inquiry; ( c ) not suppose that it lies within our power to comprehend the whole counsel of God. These broad and frank confessions of confusion or of ignorance are not at all harmful even in the Christian teacher; when he avows his inability to deal with certain questions he acquires for himself an additional measure of confidence in regard to those subjects which he does undertake to elucidate. The Bible itself does not propose to clear up every mystery, or drive away every cloud. There is a sense indeed in which the Bible is the greatest mystery of all. Even in the wildest mental confusion, there are often some points of certainty, some solid facts, histories, or experiences, upon which we can rest the mind. We should abide there until the storm abates a little, or the light so increases as to create a larger day. No man need be altogether in confusion if he be frank-minded, really earnest, and religious in spirit. Some little thing at least will be given to him, which he can seize and hold with a firm hand. Stand by the one thing which is clear and plain, and from that work onward and outward towards those truths which seem to hang on the distant horizon.