April 3, 2019

As a father has compassion on his children, so the LORD has compassion on those who fear him.
—Psalm 103:13

In children there is something worse than ignorance and weakness, and that is their childish follies.64 A father and mother will put up with a thousand little ways in their children that strangers would frown at. There are all sorts of excuses made on their behalf, and it is right enough that it should be so. It is not weakness in children, it is just childishness. And so parents bear with their children.
But oh, how our Father bears with us! We think we are very wise; it is highly probable that we are never such fools as when we think we are displaying our wisdom. We think we are pleasing God sometimes, and in that very act we are displeasing him, though we know it not. There are sins in our holy things—oh, how strange must some of the things that we do seem to our great God! We have gotten so accustomed to them, we put up with them in others, and others put up with them in us.
There is much about our doubts and fears that must be depressing to the mind of the Father. Do we doubt him? Do we distrust his promises? We try to make out that we do not, but if you sift it thoroughly, it comes to that. Oh, the Father knows that we do not mean it, that we shrink in an instant from calling him a liar, and if anybody else were to put forward the very doubt that we have been entertaining we would be horrified.
And I believe it is a part of our Father’s compassion that he should thus look on us and often construe what we do in such a kind and tender way. You know how Jesus prayed for his murderers—“Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34). And the Son is very like the Father; our Father does the same with us, he forgives us because we do not know what we do. It was beautiful of our Lord even with Pilate to say, “The one who handed me over to you is guilty of a greater sin” (John 19:11). It was the best he could say for Pilate, that though his sin was great yet there was a greater.
And our Father has those kind thoughts ready, we may be sure, for his children’s wild and wayward deeds; Jesus had them ready even for his most wicked adversaries. Yes, he has compassion on our follies and bears with us still.
—C. H. Spurgeon

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