You see a person nervous and anxious sometimes. He says, the only thing I feel I can do now, is to get my eye upon the Lord. It is not that I do anything. It is the sense of dependence upon Him.
Let me illustrate this. It is like a flower and the sun. Take a little daisy. It has not opened today. What is the reason? There is no sun. The daisy won’t come out, for there is no sun. Take the finest, the most expanded flower you ever saw, and put a cover on it, and hide it from the sun, and you will wither it up. Its dependence is upon the sun.
Many a saint is like a plant you sometimes find in the garden-house with a long taper stalk working its way out at the door or window. There is no real development about him. It is not a question of root. There is a difference between root and flower, and between root and fruit. You have the root, but no fruit. You must have blossom before the fruit, and the reason you have not got blossom, is that you have not got sun. Look at any plant you like, and if it has not got sun, it is flowerless. Many a Christian is like the stalk traveling out of the garden-house to get light from the sun. No flower can do without the light of the sun, and no Christian can do without the light of Christ.
I often ask myself, have I had the glory of Christ shining upon me this morning? The Israelites did not want to go to the baker’s shop for the manna. They gathered it in the morning, before the sun was up. Before the influences of the day, the soul gets the sense of what Christ is, for a provision for it. The soul sees in the light of the glory of that blessed presence all he wants, and no where else. Do you think that a sorrowful thing? It is the most joyful thing a soul can see? “Without me ye can do nothing.”
I say― “Thank God!”