What a joyous thing if I can say that my eve is on Christ, and that that Christ is the vessel in which I am hid in God, and in which all the fullness of God is to be poured into me. And if so, is it not a little thing to have to give up all little things to that Christ, to let all I do be in the light of His presence?
There is a difference between looking for Christ, and living in the light of His coining, as the point to look up to, referring everything to it. We are set between two things-the cross and the coming. Hope, when really in power in the heart, looks straight on, right up to that point. Our life should be given up to the Lord in the light of His coming. Oh, to do all, and to give up all, in the light of this coming Lord! What a blessed thing to the heart that loves Him? Oh that one might be found occupied and busied in doing everything as to this coming Lord!
What strange beings we are! professing to be occupied about the coming of Christ, and yet refusing to do things, or be occupied about things only in the light of His coming.
It is the question of the object of life-what is it that I am living to? That is a life of the Spirit where Christ is the only object. It signifies little who it may be, whether a Timothy or an elect lady—it just comes to the simple question, Are you living to Christ? A bed-ridden saint may live to Christ; another there may be whose object in life is the looking for the coming of Christ, and who is doing everything in reference to that.
" We look for a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness." Ah there will not be scenes there in which man in failure will meet the eye of God. It will be the Lord's earth then, no Serpent there, no temptation, but everything that meets the mind of God. Not man as a creature in Eden, but man where all in man meets the mind of God: the whole a scene becoming His Son. That One -both God and man-able to introduce God in everything. God thinks it meet that His Son should be in a place every part of which has the savor of redeeming love, that He should have His people there in glory with Himself.
When we come to the glory, it will not be the golden city, not what we are, but Christ Himself that will be the absorbing object of our hearts, the being with Him, and the being able to appreciate what He is, all the deluge of glory nothing, compared with being where He is fully and completely appreciated, and He being the alone object to each individual heart. Even when down here in humiliation, do not we see that directly He appeared on the scene, no other could, stand, He being the alone One to open His mouth, to be listened to; and as they failed to see Him as the One, the All, in the scene, so they failed to get blessing.