ALL YOUR CARE by Daniel Blain

Seventh-Day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Thursday, March 4, 1880

FromThe Advent Review and Sabbath Herald, Advent Review and Sabbath Herald, Vol. 55, No. 10

“ALL YOUR CARE.”

By Daniel Blain

“All your care:” let us see what it means. It means, first, that we should look less within for relief and comfort, and more without and upward. We are to remember the first lesson impressed upon the soul when it has come under conviction of sin. When the Spirit of God enlightens the soul and reveals all the corruption of sin, the sinner is overwhelmed at the view, the soul is in intensest bitterness and turns every way for relief. The first impulse seems to be to set about its own cleansing. Like Bunyan’s man with the muck-rake, the convinced soul is gloomily resolved on making itself better. It is as though it could not look up to see the blessed One with the celestial crown ready to be placed upon the head. And it is only when despairing of the vain endeavor that it gives up, looks up, believes, lives, rejoices in God, who is able to make the foulest clean. The lesson is this: So long as we keep our cares to ourselves, so long as we brood over them and wrestle with them, just so long will they bring grief and pain. So long as we are satisfied with the light of our own understanding, and endeavor to walk through the world by the lamp of earthly wisdom, just so long may we expect to stumble and fall.

A vast amount of the piety of the church is thus beclouded and rendered both unhappy and inefficient. Our young men, for example, seem to think that they are to look for a call from God as to nothing but the ministry of the Word. When it is once settled that they are not called to preach the gospel, then they seem to think they are free to enter any business, to go anywhere as may suit their inclination or strike their fancy. Thus we find so many twice prodigals, or oftener, it may be. They have returned, indeed, but wander off once and again from the Father’s house. Many of us become chronic wanderers. We undertake for ourselves, only to find that we are children, too weak to turn our backs upon the Father’s house and breast alone the billows of this world’s troubles.

Now, the divine injunction is, “Be careful for nothing; but in everything, by prayer and supplication, let your requests be made known unto God.” But that does not mean carelessness. It does not mean that the Christian is to repudiate reason, thought, energy, and industry; but only this, that our communion with God shall be free and full, that we seek his concurrence in all our plans, that we seek his glory in all our enterprises, that we be faithful in all that he has committed to our hands. When we do this, then are we “careful for nothing.” His is now the care. And so when disappointment and disaster are sent, we go right into our refuge. We say, “It is the Lord,” and are at peace. This was the way Paul was a happy Christian within prison walls. This was the way Job’s faith got to be so strong.

Second, “Casting all our care upon him” means that we accept the promises in all literalness and make them the foundation of our expectation. Our Lord has told us, and this ought to suffice us, that “all power in Heaven and earth is in his hands.” God has made him “head over all things to his church,” and the promise that “he will surely do them good,” casts its light like the sun upon the Christian’s way. However confused and inexplicable the workings of Providence may seem, it is unalterably true that “all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.” When they are troubled about temporal things, let the righteous trust in the Lord, and do good, and they shall dwell in the land, and verily they shall be fed. As to eternal things, if Christ’s children do have afflictions, they are few and light, lasting but for “a moment,” and “shall work out for them a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory;” “for I reckon,” says the apostle, “that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.” But says the sorrowing one, “It is easy to say these things when all is smooth, and to comfort those upon whom the cloud of adversity has settled. The day of trial is when the iron enters our own souls; then there is a mighty difference.” True enough, poor sufferer; we will try to remember the reproof of Eliphaz: “Thy words,” said he to Job, “have upholden him that was falling, and thou hast strengthened the feeble knees: but now it has come upon thee, and thou faintest; it toucheth thee, and thou art troubled.” Yes, this is indeed the critical moment. Now, if ever, is the time to walk by faith and not by sight. Now is the time to show that we have trusted all to God. Now is the time to rise wing to wing with the angel of the evangel, as he tells the world that “there is balm in Gilead.” Job did it. “I know,” said he, “that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth; and though after my skin-worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God; whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another.”

Somewhere it is related of a Christian that when reduced from opulence to penury, he wrote to a friend rejoicing in his lot, because it had taught him the sweetness of that word of the psalmist, “Thou art my portion, O Lord.”

Third, “Casting all our care upon him” means faith that God’s providence is directing all things for us. It is not true as men commonly mean it when they say, “All is for the best.” So far as human welfare is concerned, God’s providence works invariably only for such as love him. The Scriptures teach us that God is ruling the world with direct reference to the redemption of Christ’s people. To this point, therefore, all things in the world’s history converge. Therefore saith the Scripture again to the “children of light,” “All things are yours: whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come: all are yours, and ye are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.” How wonderfully comprehensive and satisfying is such a declaration, and one day we shall rejoice in it, in the light of a gracious fulfillment, as we look back over the checkered scenes of a completed pilgrimage. In the meantime let us comfort ourselves with that simple but exquisite statement of God’s thoughts to us-ward which our Lord gives in the gospel; and so let us be obedient to the heavenly message, casting all our care upon him, for he careth for us:

Oh, eyes that are weary, and hearts that are sore, Look off unto Jesus and sorrow no more; The light of his countenance shineth so bright That here, as in Heaven, there need be no night.

So let us cast our care upon God, remembering that he careth for us.—Daniel Blain, in Christian at Work.