the Third Week after Easter
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Daily Devotionals
John Gossner's Treasury
Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths. Proverbs 3:5-6.
Must not the Lord, our Savior, complain of many Christians as David complained of his neighbors, "I am forgotten as a dead man out of mind" (Psalms 31:12)? Yea, many remember Him as little as they remember one who died nineteen hundred years ago, or as one whom they have never known. They say, “In death there is no remembrance of Thee" (Psalms 6:6). When there is no life of God in the heart, but only death, the heart does not think of its Savior, and cannot think of Him. But where the Lord dwells in the heart, there dwells also the remembrance of Him; there we do not only think of Him we dwell in Him; there the heart is full of joy in Him; there it beholds His kind countenance; there it perceives His presence, is fascinated thereby, forgets everything else and says to Him, “I held Him and would not let Him go" (Song of Solomon 3:4). If the morning star be risen in our hearts, it ever beams into the eye in such a way that we can no more forget it. It shines night and day and never sets, if we do not turn our eyes away from it or throw sand into our own eyes; if we keep ourselves unpolluted by things that dim our vision of the star and cloud the horizon of the soul. He whose earnest desire is to be pure in heart and blessed in the Lord, knows also that he cannot be without Him a moment. He dares not take a step without Christ, because he is himself just as little able to go straight and follow the right path as a new-born child. Who is able to suffer without Christ? The more afflictions crowd upon us, the more closely we are to embrace Him. Every cross crushes us and makes us unhappy if He is not in us to strengthen the weak, to raise the fallen, to heal the bruised and comfort the sorrowful. O dear soul, hold Him fast and let not go of Him; for without Jesus all your happiness is gone.
Come, holy Sun of heavenly love.
Send down Thy radiance from above;
And to our inmost hearts convey
The Holy Spirit’s cloudless ray.
