Words like appalling, barbaric, evil are once again everywhere after last night's attack on an audience of families and notably young females in Manchester. Just when we think the worst has happened another worst comes along. Sometimes it is hard to be human. For that reason, we pray for those who mourn without ourselves being able to enter the darkness they are suddenly inhabiting.
Manchester will rally round, as any great northern community would. Even the Football Clubs have offered early sympathy. In despair we need companionship and sympathy but ultimately we need blessing. Are we only to travel through this world from tragedy to tragedy for it all to end in meaninglessness? Is there any help from outside this vexed journeying?
As Manchester grew in Victorian England, with people dying like flies in the industrialised, overcrowded squallor so well captured in Elizabeth Gaskell's novel North and South, William Gadsby preached. Although he was born in Warwickshire, he became deeply embedded in the affections of the poor in Manchester. This is the more remarkable because he is known today, in as far as he is known, for his strict adherence to the doctrine of election; that only God can save. This did not stop him addressing all manner of social issues that involved the (apparently) unelect, and nor did it stop the unelect wanting to hear him or being converted under his ministry.
The mystery of his attraction has eluded most preachers and churches who stick closely to the Biblical evidence that if you're going to get to heaven God will have to do it, not you. Yet his appeal came because from this providential view he was able to offer even the most desperate person a possibility of sovereign blessing that nature and circumstances and Manchester appeared to have crushed from their lives. If only God comes in. And today, using some of Gadsby's words, we pray that to hearts torn rawly by grief and hurt, to whom this world has become a happy home no longer, God may indeed come in;
Blessed are those who mourn. The dear Lord of the house does not merely say they may, or shall be, blessed; but they absolutely are blessed; now blessed, though they may not be able to enjoy the blessings which belong to them . . . Poor, sin-burdened, Satan-hunted, broken-hearted mourners! All things are yours; for ye are Christ's and Christ is God's. Your life is hid with Christ in God, and because he lives ye shall live also. ...In his own time he will, by the power of his Spirit, discover unto them the beauty of his own Person and righteousness; and then they shall see the King in his beauty, (Isa. 33:17) as the Lord their righteousness and strength. Jesus, in his Person, blood, and obedience; in his glorious offices, characters, relationship, names, honours, fullness, love, and loveliness, shall be revealed unto them, by the glorious power and under the divine anointing of God the Holy Ghost; and this shall produce .. a joy unspeakable and full of glory. Then shall their sorrow be turned into joy
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