The Christian's Secret to a Happy Life 19 - The chariots of God.
By Hannah Whitall Smith
It has been well said that "earthly cares are a heavenly discipline." However, they are even something better than discipline they are God's chariots, sent to take the soul to its high places of triumph.
They do not look like chariots. Instead, they look like enemies, sufferings, trials, defeats, misunderstandings, disappointments, unkindnesses. They look like misery and wretchedness waiting to roll over us and crush us into the earth. But if could we see them as they really are, we would recognize them as chariots of triumph in which we may ride to those heights of victory for which our souls have been longing and praying. The difficulty is the visible thing. The chariot of God is the invisible. The King of Syria came up against Elisha with horses and chariots that could be seen by every eye, but God had chariots that could be seen by none except the eye of faith. The servant of the Prophet could only see the outward and visible. In 2 Kings 6:15 he cried, "Alas, my Master! how shall we do?'' But Elisha sat calmly within his house without fear, because his eyes were opened to see the invisible. All he asked for his servant was, "Lord, I pray Thee open his eyes that he may see" (2Kings6:17).
This is the prayer we need to pray for ourselves and for one another, "Lord, open our eyes that we may see." The world all around us, as well as around the Prophet, is full of God's horses and chariots waiting to carry us to places of glorious victory. And when our eyes are opened, we will see in all the events of life, whether great or small, whether joyful or sad, a "chariot" for our souls.
God's Chariots
Everything that comes to us becomes a chariot the moment we treat it as such. And on the other hand, even the smallest trials may crush us into misery or despair if we let them. It is up to us to choose which it will be. It does not matter what these events are, but how we take them. We can either lie down under them and let them roll over us and crush us, or we can view them as chariots of God and make them carry us triumphantly onward and upward.
Whenever we climb into God's chariots the same thing happens to us spiritually that happened to Elijah. We will have a translation, not into the heaven above us as Elijah did, but into the heaven within us. This, after all, is almost a grander translation than his. We will be carried away from the low, earthly, grovelling plane of life, where everything hurts and everything is unhappy, up into the "heavenly places in Christ Jesus" (Ephesians 1:3). There we can ride in triumph over all below.
These "heavenly places" are interior, not exterior. The road that leads to them is interior also. But the chariot that carries the soul over this road is generally some outward loss or trial or disappointment, something that is not joyous, but grievous. However, afterwards it "yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby" (Hebrews 12:11).
Our "chariot" often looks very unlovely. It may be a nasty relative or friend. It may be the result of human malice or cruelty or neglect. But every chariot sent by God is paved with love, since God is love. And God's love is the sweetest, softest, tenderest thing that was ever found by any soul anywhere.
The Bible tells us that when God went forth for the salvation of His people He "didst ride upon (His) horses and chariots of salvation" (Habakkuk 3:8) and it is the same now. Everything becomes a "chariot of salvation" when God rides upon it. He "maketh the clouds His chariot" (Psalm 104:3), we are told, and rides "on the wings of the wind" (Psalm 18:10). Therefore, the clouds and storms that darken our skies and seem to shut out the shining of the sun of righteousness are really only God's chariots which we may "ride prosperously" (Psalm 4 5 :4) over all the darkness . Have you made the clouds in your life your chariots? Are you "riding prosperously" with God on top of them all?
I knew a lady who had a housekeeper who worked slowly. She was an excellent girl in every other respect, and very valuable in the household. However, her slowness was a constant source of irritation to her employer who was naturally quick and who always became irritated at slowness. This lady would lose her temper with the girl twenty times a day, and twenty times a day would repent of her anger and be determined to conquer it, but in vain. Her life was made miserable by the conflict. One day it occurred to her that she had been praying a long while for patience, and that perhaps this slow housekeeper was the very chariot the Lord had sent to carry her soul over into patience. She immediately accepted it as such, and from that time used the slowness of her housekeeper as a chariot for her soul. The result was a victory of patience that no one was ever able to disturb.
