HH, Sir Godfrey Gregg D.Div

The Condescension of God’s Love

There was one other comfort for the psalmist at which our text hints unobscured. He had been awakened through the knowledge that he speaks of to the infinite condescension of God’s love.

A well-known German religious writer who has brought comfort to multitudes of mourners tells us how once he had a visit from a friend who was in great distress. This friend had once been a very wealthy man, and now he had fallen upon evil days, and that very morning one of his old companions had passed him without recognition on the street. Then Gotthold, for such was the writer’s name, took him by the hand and, pointing upward, said, “Thou hast known my soul in adversities.”

It is one of the sayings of the moralist that the world courts prosperity and shuns adversity. There are rats in every circle of society who all hasten to leave the sinking ship. But what the psalmist had awakened to was this: the eternal God, who was his refuge, had known him and acknowledged him and talked with him when his fortunes were at their very blackest. Nothing but love could explain the condescension. He had found in God a friend who was unfailing. “If I ascend into heaven thou art there; if I make my bed in hell thou art there.” So was the world made ready for the Saviour who, when other helpers fail and comforts flee, never deserts us, never is ashamed of us, never leaves us to face the worst alone.