Daily Devotionals

Bowen's Daily Meditations

Devotional: March 12th

" Light is sown for the righteous." - Psalms 97:11.

Almost all our sorrow is connected with darkness, with misconceptions, with defective knowledge of the reasons that influence God in his dealings with us; and light is fitly used as a metaphor expressive of gladness and of a soul-satisfying manifestation of God.

The scattered seed disappears in the ground that receives it. He that is to eat its fruit does not see it fall, knows nothing of it in its prolonged incarceration. Perhaps he is far away, and millions stand between him and it. He is occupied with his cares, great or minute; yet all the while the un-slumbering, un-hastening providence, of God watches over that ripening plant, and conducts it to a state of faultless fruitfulness; then gathers it, conveys it, and presents it to him for whom it was intended.

In like manner, does God hide long the blessing intended for his servant that trusts in him; and thus proves his servant whether indeed he trusts in him.

This servant perhaps passed through a season of strange and inexplicable experiences. A spirit of intense supplication was poured upon him, without a single response to his fervent petitions. His soul was consumed with desires, and those not unhallowed; yet the heaven of brass and the earth of iron seemed only to mock his longing. A strong and an enduring faith enabled him to grasp the mightiest promises of God, and vigorously to knock with them at heaven’s gate; yet echo seemed only to say, " What is faith? what is a promise?" He was ready to conclude that all creation, even all earth, and all heaven, had received an inviolable command from the Deity to yield him no light - no, not a glimmer; and that he was given over a prisoner to everlasting night. He drank the cup his God had given him; got almost used to its daily bitterness; became familiar with the midnight of God’s un-answering providence; wondered how God could reconcile it with his perfections to let prayer and sanctified desire go so long unanswered; but wondered without murmuring, and was willing that God should have his own way, and vindicate as it pleased him, his own reputation. Yet all the while that wondrous God, apparently cruel, yet in reality beyond expression faithful, was busied pouring out in superabundant fullness in some remote un-dreamt-of spot, the supplicated blessing. Yes, God took in his hand a seed the very day that servant cried to him; and as he continued in supplication, he continued enriching the selected object, freighting the chartered vessel; a thousand of his providential angels were commanded to wait upon it, and bring it every excellent ornament, load it with most beautiful fruit. Light was sown, light was reared, light was perfected. Then, with no little joy on the part of the heavenly ones, who had been in the secret, the un-expecting suppliant was brought into the presence of the light, and with equal confusion, admiration, and delight, saw that the Almighty had not despised his affliction, nor disregarded his impassioned supplication.

Captives in Egypt, the Israelites cried unto God. They cried vehemently, and long; yet, God came not. They had boasted of their God to the Egyptians as the hearer of prayer; and the Egyptians waited with them to see whether he would come; but at last taunted them with the fruitlessness of their prayers, and recommended them to call upon the idols of Egypt. But all the while God was listening eagerly to their cries, and daily heaping up a depository of blessing in answer to them. His selected seed was in the land of Midian. There dwelt and wandered Moses, the shepherd. Ten thousand prayers for deliverance, offered up by the far-off captives, were answered in ten thousand incidents and influences, all tending to make this Moses one of the meekest of men, God-fearing, nobly intellectual, sympathetic, believing. At length, we may suppose, the Israelites had almost begun to think that God had given no heed to their misery, and to their prayers. But Moses appears; the light that had been sown dawned upon them; and sounding the loud timbrel, they went forth celebrating the faithfulness of God.

Even the Sun of Righteousness was first a seed in the silence and solitude of Bethlehem, and remained long un-manifested in the obscurity of Nazareth. So Paul in Tarsus. It was not till many a year after God had sown this light for the church, that Barnabas went to Tarsus and brought him thence to Antioch, where he was commended to the grace of God and sent forth to be the means of dispelling much darkness in Asia Minor, Greece, and Italy.

And is there light now sown somewhere, growing unto Isaiah 60?

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