Evening and Morning
By Charles Haddon Spurgeon
September 7
Morning
"And when they could not come nigh unto Him for the press, they
uncovered the roof where he was: and when they had broken it up, they let down
the bed wherein the sick of the palsy lay."—Mark 2:4.
Faith is
full of inventions. The house was full, a crowd blocked up the door,
but faith found a way of getting at the Lord and placing the palsied man before
Him. If we cannot get sinners where Jesus is by ordinary methods we must use
extraordinary ones. It seems, according to Luke 5:19, that a tiling had to be
removed, which would make dust and cause a measure of danger to those below,
but where the case is very urgent we must not mind running some risks and
shocking some proprieties. Jesus was there to heal, and therefore fall what
might, faith ventured all so that her poor paralyzed charge might have his sins
forgiven. O that we had more daring faith among us! Cannot we, dear reader,
seek it this morning for ourselves and for our fellow-workers, and will we not
try to-day to perform some gallant act for the love of souls and the glory of
the Lord.
The
world is constantly inventing; genius serves all the purposes of human desire:
cannot faith invent too, and reach by some new means the outcasts who lie
perishing around us? It was the presence of Jesus which
excited victorious courage in the four bearers of the palsied man: is not the
Lord among us now? Have we seen His face for ourselves this morning? Have we
felt His healing power in our own souls? If so, then through door, through
window, or through roof, let us, breaking through all impediments, labour to bring poor souls to Jesus. All means are good and
decorous when faith and love are truly set on winning souls. If hunger for
bread can break through stone walls, surely hunger for
souls is not to be hindered in its efforts. O Lord, make us quick to suggest
methods of reaching Thy poor sin-sick ones, and bold to carry them out at all
hazards.
Evening
"There is sorrow on the sea; it cannot be quiet."—Jeremiah
49:23.
Little
know we what sorrow may be upon the sea at this moment. We are safe in our
quiet chamber, but far away on the salt sea the hurricane may be cruelly
seeking for the lives of men. Hear how the death fiends howl among the cordage;
how every timber starts as the waves beat like battering rams upon the vessel!
God help you, poor drenched and wearied ones! My prayer goes up to the great
Lord of sea and land, that He will make the storm a
calm, and bring you to your desired haven! Nor ought I to offer prayer alone, I
should try to benefit those hardy men who risk their lives so constantly. Have
I ever done anything for them? What can I do? How often does the boisterous sea
swallow up the mariner! Thousands of corpses lie where pearls lie deep. There
is death-sorrow on the sea, which is echoed in the long wail of widows and
orphans. The salt of the sea is in many eyes of mothers and wives. Remorseless
billows, ye have devoured the love of women, and the stay of households. What a
resurrection shall there be from the caverns of the deep when the sea gives up
her dead! Till then there will be sorrow on the sea. As if in sympathy with the
woes of earth, the sea is for ever fretting along a thousand shores, wailing
with a sorrowful cry like her own birds, booming with a hollow crash of unrest,
raving with uproarious discontent, chafing with hoarse wrath, or jangling with
the voices of ten thousand murmuring pebbles. The roar of the sea may be joyous
to a rejoicing spirit, but to the son of sorrow the wide, wide ocean is even
more forlorn than the wide, wide world. This is not our rest, and the restless
billows tell us so. There is a land where there is no more sea—our faces
are steadfastly set towards it; we are going to the place of which the Lord
hath spoken. Till then, we cast our sorrows on the Lord who trod the sea of
old, and who maketh a way for His people through the
depths thereof.