EVERY morning we may wake and say, “I am alive! A fraction of my allotted minute still lies before me. Thank God, thank God!” God, my Creator and Protector, has placed me in front of this particular day as the material on which I am to work. He is above me, the work, is before me, He has given the tools into my hands and He will direct me.
That everything must lie under the direct control of Christ is surely clear; every hour of time, every shilling of money, every book we read or leave unread, every friendship we begin. We must go to no amusement where His presence would be a note out of harmony, we must tell no tale and speak no sentence we should not like Him to hear. Each letter we write, and thing we buy, and meal we eat, and picture we hang on our walls must receive His approbation, though the decision may scarcely be a conscious one.
There is a strait gate to pass and a narrow way to walk in and something of an ever-present denial of self to practice.... The outer form of our life may appear fair and peaceful, yet there are always some ... stern elements hidden deep within, for such a conflict is absolutely necessary to our sharing in the mind and will of our Lord and Master.
“The Lord... shall make fat thy bones.” (Isa. 58:1111And the Lord shall guide thee continually, and satisfy thy soul in drought, and make fat thy bones: and thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters fail not. (Isaiah 58:11).) The wrestling in prayer, the grim holding on to our faith in a God of goodness and love when we know something of the sins and forlorn miseries that are going on in the depths of the world... all shall be gifted with fresh life, strengthened, expanded, made perfect. Think of prayer becoming a relief and a joy, like a child running home without stretched arms; think of faith as a laying back of the whole history of our race into the care of God, and knowing that we are responsible only for our immediate surroundings... and give heartfelt thanks that so ii may be.
C. L. M.