the Third Week after Easter
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Daily Devotionals
John Gossner's Treasury
If a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would utterly be contemned. Song of Solomon 8:7 .
Love for love. If you had given all that you have, and all that you are; if you had sacrificed yourself fully and completely for the sake of love, you would yet not have paid its price: you would have given nothing for it. Still you have not sacrificed this "nothing;" perhaps you will not sacrifice this "nothing" in earnest. So insignificant do you regard love, that love which is costlier and more precious than all the costly and precious things contained in heaven and on earth. It is God Himself, the highest good. Love will bestow upon you itself, but you are also to sacrifice your heart and to make yourself susceptible to love by emptying your heart of everything which is not love, of everything which is not of God. Let all other things depart, that you may contain only this. Love wants to possess your heart alone, and it will give itself to you whole and undivided. You owe love for love; you owe it from eternity; for Love has loved you from eternity, and, besides. Love has in time sacrificed itself for you. You can, throughout all eternity, not become richer, more glorious, more blissful, than if you eternally love this eternal Love with an undivided heart, and when you completely surrender yourself to it.
O Lord, how cheering is Thy ray!
All pain before Thy presence flies;
Care, anguish, sorrow, melt away,
Wherever Thy healing beams arise;
O Jesus, nothing may I see.
Nothing desire or seek but Thee.
