You have been living with this a long while now, the jolt in the walls, the unease in your own skin, the bills piling up for treatments you never should have needed. And on top of the bodily trouble, the weight of someone who has the power to make it right and will not. That is a heavy cross, and I do not wonder that your heart cries out for justice.
Let me put a steadying thought before you. However high your landlord may sit in his own reckoning, he is still God’s tenant. The house is his only for a season; the true title deeds belong to Another. Breath and strength, property and position, all of it is held on sufferance from the hand that made him. He may boast himself in the glory of his careful management, but he is not beyond the reach of the Almighty. There is no lock on any door that God’s mercy, or God’s chastisement, cannot unfasten. The sun itself can be made to scorch the proud, and the still small voice of conscience can find a man in the innermost chamber of his soul when every outer defense is stripped away. You may safely leave that door in your landlord’s heart to the One who knows precisely where to knock.
Yet here is the tenderest part of it, the way God often works is not by battering down the resistant will, but by lavishing goodness until the hardness cracks from within. You are praying for the Holy Spirit to stir and awaken conscience, and that is a prayer very dear to the heart of Christ. For it is His ordained way, when a soul is shut up in selfishness, not to strike but first to shine. Unexpected kindnesses, small mercies, a sudden memory of a praying mother, a sleepless night in which a man’s own deeds turn and stare at him, these are the soft hammers of the Divine workman. You are asking that this man may be given the sweetest and most terrible gift: to see himself as he is, and to flee to the only remedy. That is no small petition, and it is laid upon the altar of a Savior who knows the cost of it, for He Himself bore the wrongs of others without reviling.
Meanwhile, dear soul, do not think that your own sorrows have fallen out of the Lord’s sight. Every electric shock that ran through you, every inflamed patch of skin, every expense you could not afford, and every threatening word that fell upon your ear, He has numbered them all. He who counts the stars and calls them by name is not absent when one of His little ones sits in distress. The love that did not spare His own Son but gave Him up for us, how shall He not, with Him, also freely give us all that we need? He may permit the trial to endure longer than you would wish in order that you may taste something deeper than relief, that you may know what it is to lean your whole weight upon Him and find Him utterly faithful.
And do you see? The very fact that you are praying for this landlord’s repentance, not merely for your own vindication, is itself a mark of that “repentance unto life” which the Spirit has already worked in you. The heart that can cry, “Awaken his conscience, Lord, and bring him to good,” is a heart that has been with Jesus. That is the true honey that faith gathers from the sting of affliction, it makes us more like the Master who prayed for those who wronged Him.
So set your mind at rest. The matter is not in one tenant’s hands against another; it is between a creature and his Creator. Your own portion is to trust, to act with integrity in whatever small duties lie before you today, and to let your requests be made known with thanksgiving. The Lord’s right hand can find out His adversaries, and His heart can turn them into sons. Commend the whole tangled business into those pierced hands, and be at peace.
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Lord Jesus, we bring before You this weary child of Yours, whose body has known the jangle of unsafe wires and the slow drain of illness, whose mind has been harassed by a landlord’s hard dealings. If it is Your will, bring compensation speedily and fully, and heal every lingering effect in that frame which is so fearfully and wonderfully made. But above all, we ask for that deeper miracle: send Your Holy Spirit to visit the man who has acted unjustly. Stir his conscience in the night watches; let no rest come to him until he sets this right and turns from his own crookedness to the straight path of repentance. Grant him the gift of a broken and contrite heart, which You will not despise. And to this dear one, give the quiet confidence that You are watching over the whole affair, and the inward assurance that Your goodness is the firm floor beneath every circumstance. In Your mighty name, our Shield and our exceeding great Reward. Amen.