REACHING FORWARD
REACHING FORWARD
I have to rebuke myself for feeling tired - weary of this driving life. I was contemplating with pleasure the prospect of being able to return to my own house for these winter days, but I am ashamed when I think of the apostle - naked and hungry!
We must refuse the king’s wine if we would encounter the king’s fire. It is my duty and privilege to be here for the Lord’s service. It is always the effect of His presence that He commands one’s whole attention like the queen of Sheba in the presence of Solomon. “If any man serve me, let him follow me; and where I am, there shall also my servant be” (John 12: 26).
It is one thing to renounce or drop off certain things, and quite another to be engrossed with the right thing. Monks renounce much, but they are not engrossed with Christ. It must be not only “forgetting those things which are behind”, but also reaching out unto the things that are before. It is that which you give yourself to, not what you have abandoned, that colours you and which imparts a character to you. People often dwell unduly on what they have renounced, and are too indifferent about what they might be engrossed with, not remembering that it must be the latter that is forming them. I often feel that we do not duly prize the place we are set in by God. The sense of His satisfaction in it we can never know here, but we do not occupy ourselves with it as if it were worthy of the deepest engagement of our souls and inexhaustible in its treasures. We make a morning call or possibly a daily visit to the mansion, instead of living there and exploring all the chambers and ordering of it. In divine things the more engrossed you are the more able you are to be engrossed; the more you search into the treasures, the more you acquire strength and ability to search on. The higher the eagle goes, the more he gets into the power of the sun and the larger the sphere of objects presented to his strengthened vision. Here indeed is the elixir of life, the more used, the more it can be used. May we truly use it!