Spurgeon's Morning and Evening Devotions
For the morning of April 29thby Charles H. Spurgeon
"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.
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