Reader! forget not the motive of our motto verse, “The night cometh!” Soon our tale shall be told; our little day is flitting fast, the shadows of night are falling. “Our span length of time,” as Rutherford says, “will come to an inch.” What if the eleventh hour should strike after having been “all the day idle”? A long lifetime of opportunities suffered to pass unemployed and unimproved, and absolutely nothing done for God! A judgment-day come—our golden moments squandered—our talents untraded on—our work undone—met at the bar of Heaven with the withering repulse, “Inasmuch as ye did it not.” “The time we have lost,” says Richard Baxter, “can not be recalled; should we not then redeem and improve the little that remains? If a traveler sleep or trifle most of the day, he must travel so much the faster in the evening, or fall short of his journey’s end.”
“ARM YOURSELVES LIKEWISE WITH THE SAME MIND.”
Twenty-eighth Day.
COMMITTING OUR WAY TO GOD.
“But committed himself to Him that judgeth righteously.”—1 Peter, ii. 23.
With what perfect and entire confidingness did Jesus commit Himself to his Heavenly Father’s guidance! He loved to call Him, “My Father!” There was music in that name, which enabled Him to face the most trying hour, and to drink the most bitter cup. The scoffing taunt arose at the scene of crucifixion: “He trusted in God that He would deliver Him, let Him deliver Him!” It failed to shake, for one moment, His unswerving confidence, even when the sensible tokens of the Divine presence were withdrawn; the realized consciousness of God’s abiding love sustained Him still: “My God! my God!”
How many a perplexity should we save ourselves by thus implicitly “committing ourselves,” as He did, to God! In seasons of darkness and trouble—when our way is shut up with thorns, to lift the confiding eye of faith to Him, and say, “I am oppressed, undertake for me!” How blessed to feel that He directs all that befalls us; that no contingencies can frustrate His plans; that the way he leads us is not only a “right way,” but, with all its briers and thorns—its tears and trials—it is the right way!