The Chariots of God

The chariots of God are twenty thousand, even thousands of angels: the Lord is among them, as in Sinai, in the holy place. PSALM 68:17

Of all Hannah Whitall Smith’s images, the one that has travelled furthest is the chariot. It appears first in a few lines of The Christian’s Secret of a Happy Life — “Our trials may be our chariots” — and then fills a whole chapter of its own. The idea is simple, a little startling, and very practical.

Chariots in disguise

Chariots, she says, are for carrying people. Earthly chariots carry their passengers over rough roads to where they want to go. God’s chariots carry souls, and they carry them to heights they could never reach on foot. And they are everywhere around us — but they do not look like chariots. They look like enemies, disappointments, losses, misunderstandings and unkindnesses. They look like great cars of misery waiting to crush us.

So her prayer is Elisha’s prayer for his servant: Lord, open our eyes, that we may see. And then comes the sentence on which the whole chapter turns: “We may make out of each event in our lives either a Juggernaut car to crush us, or a chariot in which to ride to heights of victory.” It all depends, she says, on whether we lie down under our trials and let them roll over us, or climb up into them and let them carry us.

Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby. HEBREWS 12:11

The slow servant

As always, she brought the idea down to the kitchen. She knew a woman of a naturally quick temper who had a servant, excellent in every way, but maddeningly slow. The mistress lost her temper twenty times a day, repented twenty times, and made no progress at all. Then it occurred to her that she had long been praying for patience, and that perhaps this slow girl was the very chariot the Lord had sent to carry her into it. She accepted her as such — and found a patience that no one’s slowness could disturb again.

Another woman, at one of their crowded conventions, had to share a room with two others who wanted to talk late into the night when she wanted to sleep. The first night she lay fuming. The next day she heard about God’s chariots, and that night she decided the talkers were hers. She lay peaceful. At last, very late, she said quietly into the dark, “Sisters, I’m lying here riding in a chariot.” There was complete silence, and she won her victory inside and out.

The point is not that trials are pleasant. It is that the trial we are praying to be rid of may be the very answer to what we have been praying for. If we ask for patience, God rarely sends a parcel of it; He sends a slow servant.

My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations; Knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience. But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing. JAMES 1:2–4

Paved with love

She loved a detail from the Song of Solomon, where the king’s chariot is described as paved with love.

He made the pillars thereof of silver, the bottom thereof of gold, the covering of it of purple, the midst thereof being paved with love, for the daughters of Jerusalem. SONG OF SOLOMON 3:10

Your own chariot, she said, may look very unlovely. It may be a difficult relative, or the result of someone’s neglect or malice. But any chariot God sends must be paved with love, because God is love, and it is His love that sends it.

Our chariots and His

Then she turned to a harder truth. We are always tempted to trust in chariots we can see — a friend who helps us, a favourite preacher, a Bible class, our own religious routine. These are good gifts, but we lean our whole weight on them, and so God often has to take them away before we will climb into His.

Some trust in chariots, and some in horses: but we will remember the name of the LORD our God. PSALM 20:7

She put it memorably. We say, He and something else — He and my experience, He and my church, He and my Christian work. Everything after the and must be taken away, or shown to be useless, before we can say, He only. As long as visible chariots are at hand, the soul will not climb into the invisible ones.

How to climb in

How, then, does one get into the chariot? Her answer was plain: “Find out where God is in each one of them, and hide yourself in Him.” Do what a small child does when trouble comes — run to its mother and hide in her arms. The real chariot, in the end, is the carrying of God.

And even to your old age I am he; and even to hoar hairs will I carry you: I have made, and I will bear; even I will carry, and will deliver you. ISAIAH 46:4

A word of care

This teaching can be misused. Said glibly to someone in fresh grief — your bereavement is a chariot, climb in — it is cruel. Hannah buried four children; she knew what suffering was, and her words were meant for use on oneself, not as a verdict on others. Paul, whose thorn she cites, prayed three times for it to be taken away before he learned to glory in it. There is a time for asking God to remove the trial, and a time for weeping, before there is a time for riding.

Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ’s sake: for when I am weak, then am I strong. 2 CORINTHIANS 12:10

But when the time comes, the invitation stands. The very thing that looks set to crush us can carry us somewhere we could not otherwise have gone.

In all their affliction he was afflicted, and the angel of his presence saved them: in his love and in his pity he redeemed them; and he bare them, and carried them all the days of old. ISAIAH 63:9

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. What have you been praying for — patience, humility, trust? Look for the chariot God may have sent in answer.

2. Name the difficult person or circumstance in your life, and say, deliberately, this is my chariot.

3. Ask what visible chariots you are leaning your whole weight on, and whether God is loosening your grip on them.

4. In your next trial, before anything else, ask: where is God in this? Then hide yourself in Him.

5. Resolve never to tell someone in fresh grief that their sorrow is a chariot. Weep with them, and pray.

A PRAYER

Lord, open my eyes, that I may see Your chariots where I have seen only enemies and misery.

I have asked You for patience and complained at the slow servant You sent. Forgive me, and help me climb in.

Take away the chariots I trust in more than You, until I can say, He only.

Carry me, as You have carried Your people all the days of old, and let me find that even this is paved with love. Amen.