ENCOURAGEMENT: THE ETERNAL NATURE OF OUR FATHER
“The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms….” (DEUTERONOMY 33:27)
The eternal nature of our heavenly Father should humble us and encourage us, too. It should humble us when we remember how frail we are, how utterly dependent upon God, and it should encourage us to know that when everything else has passed we may still have God no less surely than before!

The remembrance of this could save nations from many tragic and bloody decisions. Were notes written by statesmen against the background of such knowledge they might be less inflammatory; and were kings and dictators to think soberly on this truth, they would walk softly and speak less like gods. After all, they are not really important, and the sphere of their freedom is constricted more than they dream.

Shelley wrote of the traveler who saw in the desert two vast and trunkless legs of stone and nearby a shattered face half-buried in the sand. On the pedestal where once the proud image had stood were engraved these words: “My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair.”

And, says the poet, “Nothing else remains. Round the decay of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare the lone and level sands stretch far away.”

Shelley was right except for one thing: Something else did remain! It was God. He had been there first to look in gentle pity upon the mad king who could boast so shamelessly in the shadow of the tomb. He was there when the swirling sands covered with a mantle of pity the evidence of human decay. God was there last!

A. W. Tozer