the Third Week after Easter
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Daily Devotionals
Our Daily Homily - Volume 3
Ezekiel 24:18—So I spake unto the people in the morning: and at even my wife died.
It was a sudden stroke which befell the prophet’s home. In the morning the desire of his eyes was present to care for him, and in the even she had passed away. It is the practice of the Eastern mourner to give vent to heart-rending cries; in his case these were forbidden. He might sigh, but not aloud (R.V.). There was to be no mourning for the dead, neither tears, nor fasting, because his work was to engross him; the needs of the people preponderated over personal anguish; and he was called to set forth in his own reticence the solemn, tearless anguish with which Israel would go into captivity.
We are reminded of the words of the apostle in 1 Corinthians 7:1-40, that those who had wives should be as though they had none; those that wept as though they wept not; because the time was short, and the fashion of the world was passing away.
In every human experience there are times when the personal must be subordinated to the national and universal. We must choke back our sobs, crush down our almost uncontrollable emotion, preserve a calm and tranquil exterior, that we may devote ourselves more earnestly and continuously to the crying need of others. There is nothing nobler than the self-restraint which anoints the head and washes the face, that it may have leisure from itself to do its life-work, and to press to its bosom those who are suffering around. There was a pretty illustration of this in a recent railway accident, when a little girl, badly hurt, insisted on being cared for last.
"Yet not in solitude! if Christ anear me
Waketh Him workers for the great employ!
Oh, not in solitude! if souls that hear me
Catch from my joyance the surprise of joy."
