Behold, we go up to Jerusalem. Matt. xx. 18.
Never had there been such a going up to Jerusalem as that which Jesus here proposes to His disciples. He goes up voluntarily. The act was not enforced by any external compulsion. Jerusalem might at this time have been avoided. It was deliberately sought. It was a going up to a triumph to be reached through defeat, a coronation to be attained through ignominy and humiliation.
O believer, in your walk through the world to-day, be strengthened, be comforted, be inspired, by the spectacle of the Captain of your salvation thus going up to Jerusalem! And remember, in all those apparently downward passages of life, where sorrow, and it may be death, lie before you, that all such descents, made or endured in the Spirit of Jesus, are really upgoing steps, leading you to the mount of God and the resurrection glory.—J. B. Stratton.
September 13th.
These were the potters, and those that dwelt among plants and hedges: there they dwelt with the king for his work. 1 Chron. iv. 23.
Anywhere and everywhere we may dwell "with the King for His work." We may be in a very unlikely or unfavorable place for this; it may be in a little country life, with little enough to be seen of the "goings" of the King around us; it may be among hedges of all sorts, hindrances in all directions; it may be, furthermore, with our hands full of all manner of pottery for our daily task. No matter! The King who placed us "there" will come and dwell there with us; the hedges are all right, or He would soon do away with them; and it does not follow that what seems to hinder our way may not be for its very protection; and as for the pottery, why, this is just exactly what He has seen fit to put into our hands, and therefore it is, for the present, "His work."—Frances Ridley Havergal.
September 14th.
I will instruct thee, and teach thee in the way which thou shalt go; I will guide thee with mine eye. Psa. xxxii. 8.
When God does the directing, our life is useful and full of promise, whatever it is doing; and discipline has its perfecting work.—H. E. Cobb.
September 15th.