How varied is the experience of the believer in his spiritual life!
What changes there are in the weather of his soul! What bright sunlight
days! What dark, cloudy nights! What calms, as though his life were a
sea of glass! What terrible trials, as though his life were a
tempestuous ocean! One time we find him crying, “My God, my God, why
hast thou forsaken me,” and anon he sings, “Bless the Lord, O my soul,
and all that is within me bless His holy name.” One hour we hear him
sigh forth, “I sink in deep mire where there is no standing,” and then
we find him exulting, “The Lord is my light, and my salvation, whom
shall I fear: the Lord is the strength of my life, of whom shall I be
afraid.” How wondrously he rises to heaven, and how awfully he dives
into the deeps! Surely we who have known anything of the spiritual and
inner life do not marvel at this, for we have felt these changes. Alas!
what a contrast between the sin which doth so easily beset us, and the
grace which gives us to reign in heavenly places. How different the
sorrow of an abject distrust which breaketh us in pieces as with a
strong east wind, and the joy of a holy confidence which bears us on to
heaven as a propitious gale! What changes between walking with God
to-day, and falling into the mire to-morrow, triumphing over sin, death,
and hell yesterday, and to-day led captive by the lusts of the flesh and
of the mind. Verily, we cannot understand ourselves, and a description
which would suit us at one time, would be ill-adapted at another time.
Changeable, indeed, is our experience; but oh, what a mercy that
Christ does not change! Varied as our experience may be, His grace is
varied to meet it, for He has grace to help us in every time of need,
and with infinite and unfailing good-will supplies us in the strength
proportioned to our day.