Sufficiency

"The LORD GOD is a Sun and Shield:
the LORD will give grace and glory:
"No good thing will He withhold from them
that walk uprightly."
--PSALM LXXXIV. 11.

How pleasant to the heart of a true child to hear his father well
spoken of, and to rejoice that he is the child of such a father. We
feel that we can never thank GOD sufficiently for our privileged lot,
who have been blessed with true and loving Christian parents. But if
this be the case with regard to the dim and at best imperfect earthly
reflections, what of the glorious Reality--the great FATHER--the
source of all fatherhood, of all protection--of all that is blessed
here, and true, and noble, and good--and of all the glories to which
we look forward in the future? "The LORD GOD is a Sun and Shield: the
LORD will give grace and glory: no good thing will He withhold from
them that walk uprightly."

"The LORD GOD is a Sun and Shield," and this in the fullest
conceivable sense. None of His works can fully reveal the great
Designer, and Executor, and Upholder; and the loftiest thoughts and
imaginations of the finite mind can never rise up to and comprehend
the Infinite. The natural sun is inconceivably great, we cannot grasp
its magnitude; it is inconceivably glorious, we cannot bear to gaze
for one moment on its untempered light. The source to us of all heat,
we have to shield ourselves from its tropical power, though millions
of miles from its surface: the sustainer of the essential conditions
of physical life, and the great ruler and centre of the solar
system--how great and glorious is the natural sun! And yet it may be
the very smallest of all the countless suns that GOD has made! What
of the glorious MAKER of them all!

"The LORD GOD is a Sun." Ah! He deserves the name, He is the Reality
of all that sun or suns exhibit or suggest. My reader, is he the Sun
to you? Do you count all that to be darkness which does not come form
and accord with His light: all that to be disorder which does not
implicitly accept and delight in His rule? "O LORD of Hosts, blessed
is the man that trusteth to Thee!" Self-will is unmingled folly, and
can only end in injury and loss.

And the LORD GOD is a Shield. Dangers encompass us, unseen at every
moment. Within us, in the wonderful and delicate organisation of our
bodies--around us, when in circumstances of the greatest comfort and
apparent safety--are dangers unseen, which at any moment might
terminate our ea