| Devotional Hours with the Bible |
Chapter 2 |
Page 6 |
The coming of the knowledge of the love and mercy of God is beautifully represented in the dawning of everyday. “The dayspring from on high hath visited us.” Think of a world without sun, moon, or stars, and we have a picture of the moral world without the divine love and mercy. “Darkness and… the shadow of death” — no light to guide, to cheer, to produce joy and beauty. Then Christ comes. He comes as the dayspring. There were glimmerings of light on the horizon long before He came. The Old Testament times had their gleams of coming day. Like the day, too, this light came from above, down out of the heavens. Then, like the day, His coming changed everything into beauty. Light blesses the world in many ways. It produces all the life of earth. There would not be a bud, a flower, nor a leaf, but for the sun. Nor would there be any beauty, for every lovely thing in nature the sun paints. Think of Christ as light. His love brooding over us causes us to live, and nourishes in us every spiritual grace. Every beam of hope is a ray of His light. What the coming of light is to a prisoner in a darkened dungeon is the bursting of mercy over a guilty soul. Light gives cheer; and what cheer the gospel gives to the mourner, to the poor, to the trouble! Is it not strange that any will refuse the light? If any would persist in living in a dark cave, far away from the light of the sun, with only dim candles of his own making to pour a few poor flickering gleams upon the gloom, we should consider him insane. What shall we say of those who persist in living in the darkness of sin, with no light but the candles of earth’s false hopes to shine upon their souls? There are many such, too. They turn to every “will-o’-the-wisp” that flashes a little beam, anywhere, rather than to Christ. It is like preferring a tallow candle to the sun.
The ultimate mission of light is to show us the way through the world of darkness and “to guide our feet into the way of peace.” This is a most beautiful description of what Christ wants to do for us. He first prepared the way of peace. All this world’s paths are full of trouble and lead to despair, but Christ built a highway beautiful and safe, which leads to eternal blessedness. It was a most costly road-making; He Himself dies in preparing the way for our feet. Now He comes to us and wants to be our guide and lead us into this way of peace. We never can find our own way, and if we thrust away this blessed guidance, we must go on in darkness forever. The Christian’s way is indeed a “way of peace.” It gives peace with God, peace in our own heart because sin if forgiven, and then we have peace amid all this world’s trials. Some people think a Christian life is hard and unpleasant. But really it is the way of sweetest peace. The only truly, deeply, and permanently happy people are those whose sins are forgiven and now are going with Christ through this world, home.
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