the Fourth Week after Easter
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Daily Devotionals
Our Daily Homily - Volume 2
Psalms 88:2-3—Incline thine ear unto my cry, for my soul is full of troubles.
The psalmist has found the quickest argument before his God. There is nothing that so quickly makes the bell ring in heaven as the touch of a troubled hand. When a man is full of the interests of life, of prosperity, and self-content; when the voices of applause resound on every side; when his house is full of children, and his barn of sheaves, his prayer halts, and God seems far away. But let trouble come—let the waters, swollen by many confluent streams, begin to rise within his soul, so that lover and friend are far away, and he compassed with terror (Psalms 88:16; Psalms 88:18), then God bends his ear and heart.
O child of sorrow, do not count that you are cast away! It is true that your Lord cried from his Cross, "Why hast Thou forsaken Me?"but even Him, though laden with the sins of the world, the Father held near his heart. And He has not left you, neither can He.
"The earth and every vassal star,
All space beyond the soar of angel wings,
Wait on his word; and yet He stays his ear
For every sigh a suppliant sinner brings."
Try and think of trouble as storing your heart with seeds of joy; as acting upon you as the fire upon the primeval earth, scattering jewels through its crust; or as the glaciers that brought the rich soil into the valleys; or as the husbandman who buries the seeds of spring in the autumn fields. A veiled angel, nothing else!
"But if, impatient, thou let slip thy cross,
Thou wilt not find it in this world again,
Nor in another; here, and here alone,
Is given thee to suffer for God’s sake."
