How prone we are to cry out for justice upon another, while forgetting that we ourselves are tenants at the sufferance of a great Landlord, to whom we owe a debt we can never pay! The Lord who owns the cattle on a thousand hills has let to each of us a frail tabernacle of flesh, and He has the right to enter and inspect His own property at any hour. Vexations with earthly dwellings, even such sharp trials as electric shocks and burdensome afflictions of the skin, are but the rattling of the Landlord’s key in the lock, bidding us remember that this lease expires in a breath. Instead of fixing your eye so steadily upon the landlord who has wronged you, I would have you look higher, to the heavenly Landlord who has borne with you in your own trespasses, and whose goodness is designed to lead you to repentance. The mercies you still possess, the breath in your lungs, the mind to pray, the gathering of the saints, these are tokens of a divine forbearance that should make you weep, not merely over your landlord’s hardness, but over your own heart’s slowness to yield to the Spirit’s gentle drawings.
I do not say your cause is not just; it may well be that this man owes you recompense. But what if the Lord is using this very trial to search out your own soul? True repentance is a far rarer jewel than a victory in a legal dispute. There is a repentance of the flesh, wrung out by judgments, that makes a man sorry for consequences but never gives glory to God. Pharaoh said, “I have sinned,” when the thunder rolled and the hail fell, but his heart hardened when the sky cleared. A landlord’s conscience pricked by no more than worldly discomfort will never produce the peaceable fruits of righteousness. The repentance we are bid to preach in Christ’s name is not a mercenary bargain, a squaring of accounts with heaven so that our earthly ledger might balance. It is a gift of the risen Lord, a tearing down of self so that Christ alone may dwell in the heart. Pray therefore, not merely that your landlord would stir up a fleeting remorse and write a cheque, but that the Holy Spirit would slay him with the sword of the law and bind up his wounds with the balm of the gospel. Pray that he would see himself as a tenant before God, whose every unrighteous act is recorded in the courts above, and that he would flee to the only Shelter from the storm of justice, the finished work of Jesus Christ.
And what of your own repentance? While you wait upon the Lord for outward recompense, let this trial drive you to the cross. The repentance that saves is a sweet companion that lives as long as faith. It does not vanish once a distress is eased; it abides and makes the soul tender ever afterward. Search your own spirit: have you ever known that godly sorrow which gives God the glory even when He bruises you? Can you say, “Against Thee, Thee only, have I sinned,” and own that if He gave you no redress, He would still be just and good? The most grateful penitence flows from a sight of the love of Christ, the Son of God dying for a wretch who deserved to be cast out. When that love constrains you, you will find it possible to forgive the offending landlord, not because he deserves it, but because you have been forgiven so much more than any man could ever owe you.
Continue in prayer, but let your chief petition be that both you and he might be led by the goodness of God to genuine repentance and remission of sins. The Lord’s delays are not His denials; they are the long-suffering that would have us bring forth works meet for repentance. A month of silence from an earthly landlord is but a moment compared to the eternity of grace that waits upon the penitent. Look out of yourself to Christ only. The Man who had not where to lay His head will surely uphold your cause in wisdom, whether now or in the day when the secrets of all hearts are revealed. Rest in Him, and let the sweet Sister Repentance keep company with your faith until you enter those gates of pearl where there shall be no more electric shocks, no more diseases of the skin, and no more injustice, only the unclouded presence of the Landlord who has made us tenants of an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled.
Prayer Focus: God, Thank You for loving me. Thank You for loving me, Jesus. God, I ask You in Jesus’ name please bless me with everything that I stand in need of and everything You want me to have. 
