Evening and Morning
By Charles Haddon Spurgeon
December 19
Morning
"The lot
is cast into the lap, but the whole disposing thereof is of the
Lord."—Proverbs 16:33.
If the disposal of the lot
is the Lord's whose is the arrangement of our whole life? If the simple casting
of a lot is guided by Him, how much more the events of our entire life—especially
when we are told by our blessed Saviour: "The
very hairs of your head are all numbered: not a sparrow falleth
to the ground without your Father." It would bring a holy calm over your
mind, dear friend, if you were always to remember this. It would so relieve
your mind from anxiety, that you would be the better able to walk in patience,
quiet, and cheerfulness as a Christian should. When a
man is anxious he cannot pray with faith; when he is troubled about the world, he cannot serve his Master, his thoughts
are serving himself. If you would "seek first the kingdom of God
and His righteousness," all things would then be added unto you. You are
meddling with Christ's business, and neglecting your own when you fret about
your lot and circumstances. You have been trying "providing" work and
forgetting that it is yours to obey. Be wise and attend to the obeying, and let
Christ manage the providing. Come and survey your Father's storehouse, and ask
whether He will let you starve while He has laid up so great an abundance in
His garner? Look at His heart of mercy; see if that can ever prove unkind! Look
at His inscrutable wisdom; see if that will ever be at fault. Above all, look
up to Jesus Christ your Intercessor, and ask yourself, while He pleads, can
your Father deal ungraciously with you? If He remembers even sparrows, will He
forget one of the least of His poor children? "Cast thy burden upon the
Lord, and He will sustain thee. He will never suffer the righteous to be
moved."
My soul, rest happy in thy
low estate, Nor hope nor wish to be esteem'd or
great; To take the impress of the Will Divine, Be that thy glory, and those
riches thine.
Evening
"And
there was no more sea."—Revelation 21:1.
Scarcely could we rejoice
at the thought of losing the glorious old ocean: the new heavens and the new
earth are none the fairer to our imagination, if, indeed, literally there is to
be no great and wide sea, with its gleaming waves and shelly shores. Is not the
text to be read as a metaphor, tinged with the prejudice with which the
Oriental mind universally regarded the sea in the olden times? A real physical
world without a sea it is mournful to imagine, it would be an iron ring without
the sapphire which made it precious. There must be a
spiritual meaning here. In the new dispensation there will be no division—the
sea separates nations and sunders peoples from each other. To John in Patmos
the deep waters were like prison walls, shutting him out from his brethren and
his work: there shall be no such barriers in the world to come. Leagues of
rolling billows lie between us and many a kinsman whom to-night
we prayerfully remember, but in the bright world to which we go there shall be
unbroken fellowship for all the redeemed family. In this sense there shall be
no more sea. The sea is the emblem of change; with its ebbs and flows, its
glassy smoothness and its mountainous billows, its gentle murmurs and its
tumultuous roarings, it is never long the same. Slave
of the fickle winds and the changeful moon, its instability is proverbial. In
this mortal state we have too much of this; earth is constant only in her
inconstancy, but in the heavenly state all mournful change shall be unknown,
and with it all fear of storm to wreck our hopes and drown our joys. The
sea of glass glows with a glory unbroken by a wave. No tempest howls along the
peaceful shores of paradise. Soon shall we reach that happy land where
partings, and changes, and storms shall be ended! Jesus will waft us there. Are
we in Him or not? This is the grand question.