Daily Devotionals

Mornings and Evenings with Jesus

Devotional: December 23rd

For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away. - James 4:14.

IF life be compared to things so evanescent, let us seek the “wisdom which cometh from above,” that we may well and wisely consider our latter end. How short is human life, if we fix the period! Place it at threescore years and ten; place it even at fourscore years; “It is soon cut off, and we fly away.” But how uncertain is our reaching this period! at what age, in what place, in what condition, in what employment, have not men died! How many of our companions and neighbours have been unexpectedly and prematurely carried down to the dust! Let none, therefore, rely on youth or strength, for “surely every man at his best estate is vanity.”

Seeing that we are hastening to the grave, let us consider what is true wisdom, what the one proper and rational part which creatures circumstanced as we are have to act. Is it not to prefer the soul to the body, and eternity to time? Is it not to make the concern of the apostle supremely and constantly our own,-“That I may win Christ and be found in him”? This subject should teach us, also, that; “Whatsoever our hand findeth to do, to do it with all our might,” and to do it immediately, for there is “no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom in the grave whither we are going.” While we delay, our opportunities may have fled, never to be recalled; while we linger, we ourselves may be gone, and every possibility of usefulness be cut off. The season for doing good with us is limited to this short and equally uncertain duration. In consequence of this, what an inestimable value attaches to the present hour!

Let us therefore “redeem the time, because the days are evil.” To the Christian earth has one privilege above heaven; it is the privilege of beneficence. They who are now in joy and felicity would be ready, were it the will of God, to descend from their glory and re-enter the body and traverse again this vale of tears, to be able to do what we have now an opportunity of doing,-of “serving our generation by the will of God.” Of our Saviour it is said, He went about doing good. He said, “I must work while it is called today, for the night cometh, when no man can work;” but at last he said, “I have glorified thee on the earth, I have finished the work thou gavest me to do, and now I am no more in the world: holy Father, I come to thee.” And such, too, is the removal that awaits all his followers.

We shall soon be no more in the world; how soon it is impossible to determine. But with some, from the infirmities of nature and the course of years, the event cannot be very remote. With many, “the night is far spent, and the day is at hand.” “Now is their salvation nearer than when they believed.” O Thou in whose hands our breath is, and whose are all our ways, “So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.”

I have gone astray like a lost sheep. - Psalms 119:176.

HERE the Psalmist refers to his moral infirmities or deviations from duty. And what is the whole course of a state of nature but a series of wanderings? wanderings from the truth, from righteousness, from God; from God as our sovereign, our portion, our centre, and our end.

Even when we have been brought back to God, how sadly prone are we to depart from him again. Alas! even in his renewed state, the Christian has too frequently reason to adopt this confession, “I have gone astray like a lost sheep; “though he may be able to add, “Seek thy servant, since I do not forget thy commandments; and with Dr. Watts to say:

“I need the influence of thy grace

To speed me on my way,

Lest I should loiter in my race,

Or turn my feet astray.”

“All we,” says the Church, “like sheep have gone astray. We have turned every one to his own way.” In meditation how the mind is turned aside. In prayer what wanderings of thought-depriving the suppliants of pleasure in the exercise, and often filling them with fear as to the success of it. In hearing the precious word of God how often do we find our heart, like the fool’s eye, in the ends of the earth. And these wanderings are known unto God, “to whom all hearts are open, and from whom nothing is hid.” Hence David, in addressing God, says, “Thou tellest my wanderings.”

Although he “knoweth our frame and remembereth that we are dust,” yet he cannot approve of these wanderings; he sees sin in them, and he will correct his people for them. It will be well if we are able to say in reference to this as David did, “It is good for me that I have been afflicted, that I might learn thy statutes: for before I was afflicted I went astray, but now have I kept thy word.”

Affliction falls upon the Christian as the evening darkness falls, which at once hides the earth, and lays open the sky. Affliction is a call from these rovings, or else a hindrance to check them. We may see this exemplified in God’s dispensation towards the Jews in the time of Hosea. The Church was wandering after her lovers who had given her corn and wine and oil to induce her to go astray. “But,” says God, “behold I will hedge up thy way with thorns, and make a wall that she shall not find her paths; then shall she say, I will go and return unto my first husband, for then it was better with me than now.”

It is well if God sees that we feel these moral wanderings to be our afflictions as well as our infirmities; and well if his goodness, instead of casting us off for them, leads us to repentance, inducing us to sorrow after a godly sorrow, and to say-

“My soul hath gone too far astray,

My feet too often slip,

Yet since I’ve not forgot thy way,

Restore thy wandering sheep.”