What of this cry for the body’s fading frame, these lines and wrinkles, the failing hair, the swelling and pain? All these things declare but one truth, that the outward man perishes. Yet the smallest leaf from the Tree of Life is medicine for every inward malady. He whose back was smitten and whose cheeks gave up their hair to cruel pluckers, He has borne our griefs. Before you ask for the body’s renewing, ask whether the soul has felt the healing flood of His pardoning love. Pardon and healing are placed in happy conjunction. The new nature sins not, and where that life pulses, the distempers of the spirit yield. The Sun of Righteousness rises with healing in His wings, and the light of His countenance does more than all the apothecary’s balms.
That missing paper for the legal office, the open doors, the larger home, these are wants the Gentiles chase after. But what kind of home is it you seek? The Eternal God is the dwelling place of His people. At home one feels safe, and no home can be sweet where He is not the chief cornerstone. He who refused to spare Agag and the Amalekites’ spoil knows well when we hanker after things devoted to destruction. Will you have the house and the favor while your heart refuses to rest simply upon Christ? His favor never yet settled on a proud, demanding spirit. The Lord bestows Himself upon those who own they have no claim, who count the statute of limitations against all their legal pleas for merit. You ask for His mighty blood covering over property, finances, family, vehicles, and future, yet the blood speaks better things than mere protection of goods. It cries, “Father, forgive them,” and washes the guilty clean. Have you felt its healing upon the conscience first? Have you known the glance from those grieved eyes that breaks the heart and restores the fallen?
That prayer to defeat His enemies, He will thrust them out before you. It is His work. Yet examine well that thought in your wicked heart, as the ninth verse of Deuteronomy warns, the thought that would exact a payment or dictate terms to the Almighty. Your own unworthiness, your own impatience, your own fear that you cannot be saved, these are enemies more dangerous than any without. The healing leaves change the lifeblood, affect the spirits, and make the nature other than it was before. Where the Savior’s sweet savor rises, all the ingredients of His suffering are of equal weight; there is no imbalance in Him. Rest there, and the tumults within will cease. The Lord had certain seasons when He put forth His healing power, and it was conspicuously present when He was teaching. Sit at His feet with the Word, and look not so much for the miracle in your circumstances as for the miracle in your own soul.
Keep no Agag of secret sin breathing in your house. That fiery petition for outward change must be baptized into submission to His perfect will, else it is but the feverish cry of nature seeking its own ease. The leaves are for the healing of the nations, not for the pampering of self. You shall have those old Sabbaths again, those blessed communions, if you will come home. He who forgives the sick of the palsy gives the greater gift first. And when peace like a river attends your way, the pain, the swelling, the doctor’s report, the lost paper, all these will find their proper proportion. The mercy which is common to all, of what use is it to any man? Appropriate to yourself a peculiar mercy: the cleansing blood, the unchanging love. That Divine hammer breaks the rock in pieces. Then, sooner than you think, you shall be far from a world of grief and sin, with God eternally shut in, where faces shine fresher than newborn babes, owing all their radiance to those healing leaves.