Morning, July 3
Go To Evening Reading
“The ill favoured and leanfleshed kine did eat up the seven wellfavoured
and fat kine.”
Genesis 41:4
Pharaoh’s dream has too often been my waking experience. My days of sloth
have ruinously destroyed all that I had achieved in times of zealous
industry; my seasons of coldness have frozen all the genial glow of
my periods of fervency and enthusiasm; and my fits of worldliness
have thrown me back from my advances in the divine life. I had need
to beware of lean prayers, lean praises, lean duties, and lean experiences,
for these will eat up the fat of my comfort and peace. If I neglect
prayer for never so short a time, I lose all the spirituality to which
I had attained; if I draw no fresh supplies from heaven, the old corn
in my granary is soon consumed by the famine which rages in my soul.
When the caterpillars of indifference, the cankerworms of worldliness,
and the palmerworms of self-indulgence, lay my heart completely desolate,
and make my soul to languish, all my former fruitfulness and growth
in grace avails me nothing whatever. How anxious should I be to have
no lean-fleshed days, no ill-favoured hours! If every day I journeyed
towards the goal of my desires I should soon reach it, but backsliding
leaves me still far off from the prize of my high calling, and robs
me of the advances which I had so laboriously made. The only way in
which all my days can be as the “fat kine,” is to feed them in the right meadow, to spend them with the Lord,
in His service, in His company, in His fear, and in His way. Why should
not every year be richer than the past, in love, and usefulness, and
joy?—I am nearer the celestial hills, I have had more experience of my
Lord, and should be more like Him. O Lord, keep far from me the curse
of leanness of soul; let me not have to cry, “My leanness, my leanness, woe unto me!” but may I be well-fed and nourished in thy house, that I may praise
thy name.