Morning, April 29
Go To Evening Reading
“Thou art my hope in the day of evil.”
Jeremiah 17:17
The path of the Christian is not always bright with sunshine; he has
his seasons of darkness and of storm. True, it is written in God’s Word, “Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace;” and it is a great truth, that religion is calculated to give a man
happiness below as well as bliss above; but experience tells us that
if the course of the just be “As the shining light that shineth more and more unto the perfect day,” yet sometimes that light is eclipsed. At certain periods clouds cover the believer’s sun, and he walks in darkness and sees no light. There are many
who have rejoiced in the presence of God for a season; they have basked
in the sunshine in the earlier stages of their Christian career; they
have walked along the “green pastures” by the side of the “still waters,” but suddenly they find the glorious sky is clouded; instead of the
Land of Goshen they have to tread the sandy desert; in the place of
sweet waters, they find troubled streams, bitter to their taste, and
they say, “Surely, if I were a child of God, this would not happen.” Oh! say not so, thou who art walking in darkness. The best of God’s saints must drink the wormwood; the dearest of his children must
bear the cross. No Christian has enjoyed perpetual prosperity; no
believer can always keep his harp from the willows. Perhaps the Lord
allotted you at first a smooth and unclouded path, because you were
weak and timid. He tempered the wind to the shorn lamb, but now that
you are stronger in the spiritual life, you must enter upon the riper
and rougher experience of God’s full-grown children. We need winds and tempests to exercise our
faith, to tear off the rotten bough of self-dependence, and to root
us more firmly in Christ. The day of evil reveals to us the value
of our glorious hope.