Editorial February 14, 1920 Issue

Weathering the Storm

William P. McKenzie

The writer of the one hundred and seventh psalm observed the providential care of God over wanderers and captives, those in sickness and those driven by storm at sea. He saw this divine Providence helping those who were homeless and solitary and leading them forth by the right way, "that they might go to a city of habitation." The prisoners "bound in affiction and iron" he saw turning for help to God who "saved them out of their distresses." The sick, loathing food and tottering weakly to the very gates of death, he observed as they would "cry unto the Lord in their trouble" and find it true that He "saveth them out of their distresses." He observed how the works and wonders of the Lord were also known to the seamen, "they that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters."

The great liner may seem to be magnificent as it towers beside its dock or when it makes its stately progress by river and estruary to the wide sea, but once upon the great waters and tossed about by the swelling waves, how it seems a small and a frail thing to contend with such gigantic forces. When the storm rages and the seamen have done all they can as they "reel to and fro," when their wisdom and experience seem unavailing and they "are at their wit's end,"—"then they cry unto the Lord in their trouble, and he bringeth them out of their distresses. He maketh the storm a calm, so that the waves thereof are still. Then are they glad because they be quiet; so he bringeth them unto their desired haven."

The student of the Bible first sees all this as picturesque description of events happening to others; but ere long discerns that the psalmist is graphically explaining life, and calling upon all of us to praise God for His goodness to the children of men. Then the student recognizes that he himself was like the wanderer in the solitary way, he was like the afficted captive set free, or the emaciated sufferer delivered, and the storm-beaten mariner brought to the haven of peace, because divine Love was his forever Savior amid all the exigencies and trials of his mortal career; and so he can join with the psalmist in saying, "Whoso is wise, and will observe these things, even they shall understand the lovingkindness of the Lord."

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