| Devotional Hours with the Bible |
Chapter 24 |
Page 5 |
Jesus showed the disciples the Father in all the love and sweetness and compassion they saw in Him continually. Do we not see God in similar ways? Does not God reveal Himself to us in a thousand familiar things that we do not think of at all as divine revealing? A writer says that most men are religious when they look upon the faces of their dead babies. The materialism which at other times infects them with doubts of God and immortality drops away from them in this hushed hour.
There’s a narrow ridge in the graveyard
Would scarce stay a child in its race;
But to me and my thought it is wider
Than the star-sown vagues of space.
People see God only in the unusual, the supernatural. “If we could see miracles,” they say, “we would believe.” But the common things are full of God. Moses saw God in one bush that burned and was not consumed. Yet God is as real in every bush in the woods, for those who have eyes to see, as He was in that little tree in Horeb.
Have you never seen God? If you think of God as only burning majesty, shining glory, you will answer, “No — I never saw God.” But splendor, Sinai clouds, and flaming fires are not God. God is love. You remember Elijah’s vision. A great wind swept through the mountains, but God was not in the wind. An earthquake made the hills tremble, but God was not in the earthquake. A fire swept down over the crags, but God was not in the fire. Then came a still small voice, a sound of gentle stillness — and that was God (see 1 Ks. 19:11-13).
You have seen God a thousand times in love, in peace, in goodness, and in comfort. You see Him daily in providential care, in the sweet things of your home, in friendships, in the beauty of little children. Do not forget that you have been receiving blessings all your life in manifold ways. Do not call it chance, or luck, or good fortune. The heart-hungry girl asked, “Why has no one every seen God?” Yet she had seen God herself every day, every hour of her life, in the goodness and mercy which had followed her from her infancy.
You were in danger, and there came a mysterious protection which sheltered you from all harm. You called it chance. It was God. You had a great sorrow which you thought you could not possibly endure, and you felt strange, sweet comfort which filled your heart with peace. You thought it came through a friend’s gentle kindness. Yes, but it was the loving-kindness of God that brought it. There was a tangle in your affairs which seemed about to wreck everything, and in an inexplicable way it was all straightened out as by invisible hands. You had a crushing loss which threatened to overwhelm you, and suddenly — the loss proved a gain! You were wronged by a professed friend, and the stars in your sky all seemed to go out. That was some while ago, and today you are quietly praising God for the event which was a deliverance from a real misfortune, for there came instead a blessed friendship which fills all your life. Your years have been full of great providences, strange guidance’s, gentle comforts, answered prayers, sweet friendships, happy surprises of goodness, divine love and help and care. Yet you say you never have seen God, and ask, “How may I know that the beautiful things the New Testament tells me about Christ are true?”
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