Job 7:16

"Handfuls of Purpose"

For All Gleaners

"Let me alone" Job 7:16

Here, again, is a natural exclamation, but one which we must train ourselves to stifle. No man can be let alone and yet live; in other words, life is an expression of communion and not of isolation. It is pleasant for the moment only to be left to oneself; even then the pleasure is a mere sensation, and is not the expression of a deep and permanent satisfaction. Can the branch say to the tree, Let me alone? Can the limb say to the body, Let me exist by myself? Can the hand live without being attached to the heart? Trace every human life in its finest expressions and issues, and it will be found that even the most lonely are not without association with the greatest, yea, even with God himself. Sometimes, for a moment, we may wish that even God himself would withdraw from us, at least in all controversial and judicial aspects: he presses us with too many questions, he impoverishes us by too many demands, he exhausts us by appeals too numerous to be answered. When we ask to be let alone, it is our weakness that speaks, not our strength: our exhaustion, not our reason. The one prayer we should constantly offer is, not to be let alone, but to be evermore an object of divine solicitude, and to be evermore called upon to answer divine claims. When God lets a man alone the man's doom is sealed. In the Book of Amos we find the words, "Ephraim is joined to idols: let him alone"; preservation from this state should be our continual and ardent desire, When the sun lets the earth alone, the earth is chilled into ice. When the mother lets the infant alone, the infant dies. Let us take heart, for all the controversy through which we pass is but so much discipline, and the end of all discipline sent by Heaven and properly accepted by man is culture, strength, satisfaction.