Spurgeon Meditations

 

Thou art my hope in the day of evil.

Jer 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 herpaths 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 periodsclouds cover the believer's sun, and he walks in darkness andsees no light. There are many who have rejoiced in the presenceof God for a season; they have basked in the sunshine in theearlier stages of their Christian career; they have walked alongthe green pastures" by the side of the "still waters butsuddenly they find the glorious sky is clouded; instead of theLand of Goshen they have to tread the sandy desert; in the placeof sweet waters, they find troubled streams, bitter to theirtaste, 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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