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\ / Charles Spurgeon's MORNING & EVENING http://www.heartlight.org/
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Friday, December 19, 2008
MORNING:
"The lot is cast into the lap, but the whole disposing thereof
is of the Lord."
-- Proverbs 16:33
If the disposal of the lot is the Lord's whose is the arrangement of
our whole life? If the simple casting of a lot is guided by him, how
much more the events of our entire life-especially when we are told by
our blessed Saviour: "The very hairs of your head are all numbered: not
a sparrow falleth to the ground without your Father." It would bring a
holy calm over your mind, dear friend, if you were always to remember
this. It would so relieve your mind from anxiety, that you would be the
better able to walk in patience, quiet, and cheerfulness as a Christian
should. When a man is anxious he cannot pray with faith; when he is
troubled about the world, he cannot serve his Master, his thoughts are
serving himself. If you would "seek first the kingdom of God and his
righteousness," all things would then be added unto you. You are
meddling with Christ's business, and neglecting your own when you fret
about your lot and circumstances. You have been trying "providing" work
and forgetting that it is yours to obey. Be wise and attend to the
obeying, and let Christ manage the providing. Come and survey your
Father's storehouse, and ask whether he will let you starve while he
has laid up so great an abundance in his garner? Look at his heart of
mercy; see if that can ever prove unkind! Look at his inscrutable
wisdom; see if that will ever be at fault. Above all, look up to Jesus
Christ your Intercessor, and ask yourself, while he pleads, can your
Father deal ungraciously with you? If he remembers even sparrows, will
he forget one of the least of his poor children? "Cast thy burden upon
the Lord, and he will sustain thee. He will never suffer the righteous
to be moved."
My soul, rest happy in thy low estate,
Nor hope nor wish to be esteem'd or great;
To take the impress of the Will Divine,
Be that thy glory, and those riches thine.
EVENING:
"And there was no more sea."
-- Revelation 21:1
Scarcely could we rejoice at the thought of losing the glorious old
ocean: the new heavens and the new earth are none the fairer to our
imagination, if, indeed, literally there is to be no great and wide
sea, with its gleaming waves and shelly shores. Is not the text to be
read as a metaphor, tinged with the prejudice with which the Oriental
mind universally regarded the sea in the olden times? A real physical
world without a sea it is mournful to imagine, it would be an iron ring
without the sapphire which made it precious. There must be a spiritual
meaning here. In the new dispensation there will be no division-the sea
separates nations and sunders peoples from each other. To John in
Patmos the deep waters were like prison walls, shutting him out from
his brethren and his work: there shall be no such barriers in the world
to come. Leagues of rolling billows lie between us and many a kinsman
whom to-night we prayerfully remember, but in the bright world to which
we go there shall be unbroken fellowship for all the redeemed family.
In this sense there shall be no more sea. The sea is the emblem of
change; with its ebbs and flows, its glassy smoothness and its
mountainous billows, its gentle murmurs and its tumultuous roarings, it
is never long the same. Slave of the fickle winds and the changeful
moon, its instability is proverbial. In this mortal state we have too
much of this; earth is constant only in her inconstancy, but in the
heavenly state all mournful change shall be unknown, and with it all
fear of storm to wreck our hopes and drown our joys. The sea of glass
glows with a glory unbroken by a wave. No tempest howls along the
peaceful shores of paradise. Soon shall we reach that happy land where
partings, and changes, and storms shall be ended! Jesus will waft us
there. Are we in him or not? This is the grand question.
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THE MESSAGE: THE BIBLE IN CONTEMPORARY LANGUAGE, by Eugene H. Peterson
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MORNING & EVENING from HEARTLIGHT /\/\
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