Quiet Time with God

 

And Isaac went out to meditate in the fields at eventide - Gen 24:63

We should be better Christians if we were more alone; we should do more if we attempted less, and spent more time in retirement, and quiet waiting upon God. The world is too much with us; we are afflicted with the idea that we are doing nothing unless we are fussily running to and fro; we do not believe in “the calm retreat, the silent shade.” As a people, we are of a very practical turn of mind; “we believe,” as someone has said, “in having all our irons in the fire, and consider the time not spent between the anvil and the fire as lost, or much the same as lost.” Yet no time is more profitably spent than that which is set apart for quiet musing, for talking with God, for looking up to Heaven. We cannot have too many of these open spaces in life, hours in which the soul is left accessible to any sweet thought or influence it may please God to send.

“Reverie,” it has been said, “is the Sunday of the mind.” Let us often in these days give our mind a “Sunday,” in which it will do no manner of work but simply lie still, and look upward, and spread itself out before the Lord like Gideon’s fleece, to be soaked and moistened with the dews of Heaven. Let there be intervals when we shall do nothing, think nothing, plan nothing, but just lay ourselves on the green lap of nature and “rest awhile.”

Time so spent is not lost time. The fisherman cannot be said to be losing time when he is mending his nets, nor the mower when he takes a few minutes to sharpen his scythe at the top of the ridge. City men cannot do better than follow the example of Isaac, and, as often as they can, get away from the fret and fever of life into fields. Wearied with the heat and din, the noise and bustle, communion with nature is very grateful; it will have a calming, healing influence. A walk through the fields, a saunter by the seashore or across the daisy-sprinkled meadows, will purge your life from sordidness, and make the heart beat with new joy and hope.

“The little cares that fretted me,  

I lost them yesterday,  

… Out in the fields with God.”

Christmas Eve

BELLS ACROSS THE SNOW

O Christmas, merry Christmas,  

Is it really come again,  

With its memories and greetings,  

With its joy and with its pain!  

There’s a minor in the carol  

And a shadow in the light,  

And a spray of cypress twining  

With the holly wreath tonight.  

And the hush is never broken  

By laughter light and low,  

As we listen in the starlight  

To the “bells across the snow.”  

O Christmas, merry Christmas,  

’Tis not so very long  

Since other voices blended  

With the carol and the song!  

If we could but hear them singing,  

As they are singing now,  

If we could but see the radiance  

Of the crown on each dear brow,  

There would be no sigh to smother,  

No hidden tear to flow,  

As we listen in the starlight  

To the “bells across the snow.”  

O Christmas, merry Christmas,  

This never more can be;  

We cannot bring again the days  

Of our un shadowed glee,  

But Christmas, happy Christmas,  

Sweet herald of good will,  

With holy songs of glory  

Brings holy gladness still.  

For peace and hope may brighten,  

And patient love may glow,  

As we listen in the starlight  

To the “bells across the snow.”  

—Frances Ridley Havergal

God's Refreshment

The journey is too great for thee     ( 1 Kgs - 19:7)

And what did God do with His tired servant? Gave him something good to eat, and put him to sleep. Elijah had done splendid work, and had run alongside of the chariot in his excitement, and it had been too much for his physical strength, and the reaction had come on, and he was depressed. The physical needed to be cared for. What many people want is sleep, and the physical ailment attended to. There are grand men and women who get where Elijah was—under the juniper tree! and it comes very soothingly to such to hear the words of the Master: “The journey is too great for thee, and I am going to refresh you.” Let us not confound physical weariness with spiritual weakness.

“I’m too tired to trust and too tired to pray,  

Said one, as the over-taxed strength gave way.  

The one conscious thought by my mind possessed,  

Is, oh, could I just drop it all and rest.  

“Will God forgive me, do you suppose,  

If I go right to sleep as a baby goes,  

Without an asking if I may,  

Without ever trying to trust and pray?  

“Will God forgive you? why think, dear heart,  

When language to you was an unknown art,  

Did a mother deny you needed rest,  

Or refuse to pillow your head on her breast?  

“Did she let you want when you could not ask?  

Did she set her child an unequal task?  

Or did she cradle you in her arms,  

And then guard your slumber against alarms?  

“Ah, how quick was her mother love to see,  

The unconscious yearnings of infancy.  

When you’ve grown too tired to trust and pray,  

When over-wrought nature has quite given way:  

“Then just drop it all, and give up to rest,  

As you used to do on a mother’s breast,  

He knows all about it—the dear Lord knows,  

So just go to sleep as a baby goes;  

“Without even asking if you may,  

God knows when His child is too tired to pray.  

He judges not solely by uttered prayer,  

He knows when the yearnings of love are there.  

“He knows you do pray, He knows you do trust,  

And He knows, too, the limits’ of poor weak dust.  

Oh, the wonderful sympathy of Christ,  

For His chosen ones in that midnight tryst,  

“When He bade them sleep and take their rest,  

While on Him the guilt of the whole world pressed—  

You’ve given your life up to Him to keep,  

Then don’t be afraid to go right to sleep.”

Night of Pure Faith

 

Lo, a horror of great darkness fell upon him    (Gen - 15:12)

The sun at last went down, and the swift, eastern night cast its heavy veil over the scene. Worn out with the mental conflict, the watching, and the exertions of the day, Abraham fell into a deep sleep, and in that sleep, his soul was oppressed with a dense and dreadful darkness, such as almost stifled him, and lay like a nightmare upon his heart. Do you understand something of the horror of that darkness? When some terrible sorrow which seems so hard to reconcile with perfect love, crushes down upon the soul, wringing from it all its peaceful rest in the pitifulness of God, and launching it on a sea unlit by a ray of hope; when unkindness, and cruelty maltreat the trusting heart, till it begins to doubt whether there be a God overhead who can see and still permit—these know something of the “horror of great darkness.” It is thus that human life is made up; brightness and gloom; shadow and sun; long tracks of cloud, succeeded by brilliant glints of light, and amid all Divine justice is working out its own schemes, affecting others equally with the individual soul which seems the subject of special discipline. O ye who are filled with the horror of great darkness because of God’s dealings with mankind, learn to trust that infallible wisdom, which is co-assessor with immutable justice; and know that He who passed through the horror of the darkness of Calvary, with the cry of forsakenness, is ready to bear you company through the valley of the shadow of death till you see the sun shining upon its further side. Let us, by our Forerunner, send forward our anchor, Hope, within the veil that parts us from the unseen; where it will grapple in ground and will not yield, but hold until the day dawns, and we follow it into the haven guaranteed to us by God’s immutable counsel. —F. B. Meyer

The disciples thought that that angry sea separated them from Jesus. Nay, some of them thought worse than that; they thought that the trouble that had come upon them was a sign that Jesus had forgotten all about them, and did not care for them. Oh, dear friend, that is when troubles have a sting, when the devil whispers, “God has forgotten you; God has forsaken you”; when your unbelieving heart cries as Gideon cried, “If the Lord be with us, why then is all this befallen us?” The evil has come upon you to bring the Lord nearer to you. The evil has not come upon you to separate you from Jesus, but to make you cling to Him more faithfully, more tenaciously, more simply. —F. S. Webster, M.A.

Never should we so abandon ourselves to God as when He seems to have abandoned us. Let us enjoy light and consolation when it is His pleasure to give it to us, but let us not attach ourselves to His gifts, but to Himself; and when He plunges us into the night of pure faith, let us still press on through the agonizing darkness.

Oh, for faith that brings the triumph  

When defeat seems strangely near!  

Oh, for faith that brings the triumph  

Into victory’s ringing cheer—  

Faith triumphant; knowing not defeat or fear.  

—Herbert Booth