"All the crowns of power flashed upon His brow. All mighty angels called Him Lord."

So it was, that while they were there, the days were completed for her to be delivered. And she brought forth her firstborn Son, and wrapped Him in swaddling cloths, and laid Him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the Inn….                                                                                                                                 

And they came with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the Babe lying in a manger…. And the shepherds went back, glorifying and praising God for all that they had heard and seen, just as had been told them.                                                                                                                                                                                                         Luke 2:6-7, 16, 20

Sleep! Holy Babe!

Upon Thy mother’s breast;

Great Lord of earth and sea and sky,

How sweet it is to see Thee lie

In such a place of rest.

Sleep! Holy Babe!

Thine angels watch around,

All bending low with folded wings,

Before th’ Incarnate King of kings,

In reverent awe profound.

Sleep! Holy Babe!

While I with Mary gaze

In joy upon that face awhile,

Upon the loving infant smile

Which there divinely plays.

Sleep! Holy Babe!

Ah! take Thy brief repose;

Too quickly will Thy slumbers break,

And Thou to lengthened pains awake

That death alone shall close.

EDWARD CASWALL

~ Sleep! Holy Babe

How wonderful this was!  We must remember who it was that was thus born.  The birth of another child in this world was nothing strange, for thousands of children are born every day.  But this was the Lord of glory.  This was not the beginning of His life.  He had lived from all eternity in heaven.  His hands made the universe.  All glory was His.  All the crowns of power flashed upon His brow.  All mighty angels called Him Lord.  We must remember this if we would understand how great was His condescension….  

      Christ’s glory was folded away under robes of human flesh.  He never ceased to be the Son of God; and yet He assumed all the conditions of humanity.  He veiled His power, and became a helpless infant, unable to walk, to speak… lying feeble and dependent in His mother’s bosom… He laid aside His sovereignty, His majesty. What condescension!  And it was all for our sake, that He might lift us up to glory.  It was as a Saviour that He came into this world.  He became Son of man that He might make us sons of God.   He came down to earth and lived among men, entering into their experiences of humiliation, that He might lift them up to glory to share His exaltation.               

J.R. MILLER~

Come Ye Apart

        How gentle the coming!  Who would have had sufficient daring of imagination to conceive that God Almighty would have appeared among men as a little child?  We should have conceived something sensational, phenomenal, catastrophic, appalling!  The most awful of the natural elements would have formed His retinue, and men would be chilled and frozen with fear.  But He came as a little child.  The great God “emptied Himself”; He let in the light as our eyes were able to bear it.

J.H. JOWETT~

My Daily Meditation

"Hope for the future comes down in every tiny snowflake."

He gives snow like wool;

​​He scatters the frost like ashes;

 ​​He sends out His word and melts them;

​​He causes His wind to blow, and the waters flow.

Psalm 147: 16,18

“For He says to the snow, ‘Fall on the earth’;

Likewise to the gentle rain and the heavy rain of His strength.”

Job 37:6

​

The heavens were gray and dull and low,

The earth was old and stained and sere,

When God outspread His spotless snow, ~

A carpet for the coming year.

Above it, sunshine came again,

Beneath it, many a weary thing

From summer heat and autumn rain

Found rest, and waited for the spring.

Lord, I am clouded like the air,

And withered like the flower and sod;

Oh! spread o’er all my sin and care,

Like snow, the perfect peace of God

Within its folds I still shall feel

The sun above, the growth below;

And the new springtime shall reveal

What things were nourished by the snow.

Then peace shall meet to joy and praise

And o’er the fruitful gardens blow,

While heaven and earth one chorus raise

To Him who giveth sun and snow.

It is not only that the snow makes fair what was good before, but it is a messenger of love from heaven, bearing glad tidings of great joy. Hope for the future comes down in every tiny snowflake. The spring sun will mount higher and higher in the heavens; the sweet snow will sink down into the arms of the violets; and, at the word of the Lord, the earth shall come up once more, as a bride adorned for her husband.

GAIL HAMILTON

December is month of bitterness and mirth; for is it not the inaugural month of Winter and the sole month of Christmas?  Before Christ came it was only month of icy Winter fierce in onset of frost and snow and raging icy wind, but since His coming December, however angry its beginning, its ending has always been in a burst of laughter, wild, hilarious, all but universal…December is month of singing beyond rose-embowered June.  There is no mirth like Christmas mirth.  Never has there been since this old world was young such inextinguishable laughter as in the Merrie Christmas time…When December begins wild winds and spitting snow, shivering is in fashion even with sparrows and squirrels; and frosts nip you in fun or earnest, you can't figure which, and when Spring comes to you more as a myth than as a memory, when it seems as if the warm south wind never drowsed past you, and as if you never had heard the drone of bees and the click of the grasshoppers' wings or smelt the heavy odor of the milkweed and had never seen the swallow glass fair form in the quiet of the evening river.  All these things are past and remembered as if they had been seen in dreams, in happy dreams.

        When, O wonder! ~ when December is at its frozen noon and riot is king, all on a sudden mirth invades this spacious Winter and voice of man and woman, youth and maid, schoolboy and little toddling child, leaps to a song, and the icy church bells sing a carol and Christmas chimneys have radiant light and everybody hangs his stocking up…. anyhow December has been silenced of his boisterous good nature of the whole sweet world of happy hearts.  And unregenerate December himself learns a Christmas tune and sings with tempestuous mirth a melody, the burden of which I catch to be: "Merry Christmas, Peace on Earth, good will to men.  Christ is come and has changed my Winter into laughing Spring.  I am less December now than June.  My flowers are children's smiling faces and my birds' singing is the Christmas laughter of such hearts as have heard that in Bethlehem a Child is born and the angels sing and I, December of the frozen heart, have caught the angels' tune, 'Praise! Praise!' "

        December, myself will learn your tune.

WILLIAM A. QUAYLE

God’s Calendar

                                                                           

Offering a Sacrifice of Praise

And let them sacrifice the sacrifices of thanksgiving, and declare His works with rejoicing.

Psalm 107:22

By Him therefore let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of our lips giving thanks to His name.                                                                                            Hebrews 13:15

Our restless spirits yearn for Thee,

Wherever our changeful lot is cast;

Glad when Thy gracious smile we see,

Blessed when our faith can hold Thee fast.

O Jesus, ever with us stay,

Make all our moments calm and bright;

Chase the dark night of sin away,

Shed over the world Thy holy light.

BERNARD of CLAIRVAUX

Jesus, Thou Joy

God's definite will for the believer is that he shall be a fountain of praise and that his life shall be in thanksgiving to God at all times and in all circumstances.  The Lord God, who is the Author of all our blessings, appreciates, desires, and even seeks our praise and thanksgiving.  "Whoso offereth praise glorifieth Me" (Psalm 50:23).  And the Psalmist also said, "Every day will I bless Thee, and I will praise Thy name for ever and ever" (Psalm 145:2).

      We are to thank God in all things; the Lord knows what is best for us, and He is ordering the course of our life, bringing the details to pass in the time and manner of His desire.  He has never made a mistake, and what He allows to come into the life of His child is for the good of that child and for the glory of God.  Any chastisement that ever reaches us comes for our profit, that we might be partakers of His holiness. (Heb. 12:10).

DONALD GREY BARNHOUSE

To be out of harmony with the things, acts, and events, which God in His providence has seen fit to array around us— that is to say, not to meet them in a humble, believing, and thankful spirit— is to turn from God.  And, on the other hand, to see in them the developments of God's presence, and of the Divine Will, and to accept that Will, is to turn in the opposite direction, and to be in union with Him.

THOMAS  UPHAM

Autumn Devotional in Honor of Pastor Chuck Smith

For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known.

And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

1 Corinthians 13:12-13

And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be His people, and God Himself will be with them as their God.

Revelation 21:3

Beyond these chilling winds and gloomy skies, —

Beyond death’s cloudy portal —

There is a land where beauty never dies,

Where love becomes immortal.

A land whose light is never dimmed by shade,

Whose fields are ever vernal,

Where nothing beautiful can ever fade,

But blooms for aye eternal.

The city’s shining towers we may not see,

With our dim earthly vision:

For Death, the silent warder, keeps the key

That opes these gates elysian.

But sometimes, where adown the western sky

A fiery sunset lingers,

Its golden gates swing inward noiselessly,

Unlocked by unseen fingers:

And while they stand a moment half ajar,

Gleams from the inner glory,

Stream brightly through the azure vault afar,

And half reveal the story.

O land unknown ! O land of love divine !

Father, all-wise, eternal,

Oh, guide these wandering, way-worn feet of mine

Unto those pastures vernal.

Heaven

NANCY A.W. PRIEST

         There is an “eventide” in the year, -- a season, as we now witness, when the sun withdraws his propitious light, when the winds arise, and the leaves fall, and nature around us seems to sink into decay. It is said, in general, to be the season of melancholy; and if by this word be meant that it is the time of solemn and of serious thought, it is undoubtedly so; yet it is a melancholy so soothing, so gentle in its approach, and so prophetic in its influence, that they who have known it feel, as instinctively, that it is the doing of God, and that the heart of man is not thus finely touched but to fine issues. When we go out into the fields in the evening of the year, we regard, even in spite of ourselves, the still but steady advances of time. A different voice approaches us ... A few days ago, and the summer of the year was grateful, and every element was filled with life, and the sun of heaven seemed to glory in his ascendant.  He is now enfeebled in his power; the desert no more “blossoms like the rose;” the song of joy is no more heard among the branches; and the earth is strewed with that foliage which once bespoke the magnificence of summer…. Such also in a few years will be our own condition…. If there were no other effects, my brethren, of such appearances of nature upon our minds, they would still be valuable; they would teach us humility, and with it they would teach us charity.

ARCHIBALD ALISON

  Sermon on Autumn

In Heaven God will give Himself wholly to us, even as He is One and Undivided; yet He will give Himself variously to the innumerable blessed ones around Him.  And we shall give ourselves to Him in like manner, for we shall see Him Face to face in all His Beauty, and love Him Heart to heart. 

F. DE SALES

Of the Love of God

~This Devotional is dedicated to Pastor Chuck Smith who has arrived to his true Home.

"Temperament we are born with, character we have to make..."

Does He not see my ways,

And count all my steps?

Job 31:4

For as his share is who goes down into the battle, so shall his share be who stays by the baggage. They shall share alike.”

1 Samuel 30:24

Take my life, and let it be consecrated, Lord, to Thee.

Take my moments and my days; let them flow in ceaseless praise.

Take my hands, and let them move at the impulse of Thy love.

Take my feet, and let them be swift and beautiful for Thee.

Take my will, and make it Thine; it shall be no longer mine.

Take my heart, it is Thine own; it shall be Thy royal throne.

Take my love, my Lord, I pour at Thy feet its treasure store.

Take myself, and I will be ever, only, all for Thee.

FRANCES RIDLEY HAVERGAL

Temperament we are born with, character we have to make; and that not in the grand moments when the eyes of men or of angels are visibly upon us, but in the daily, quiet paths of pilgrimage, when the work is being done within in secret which will be revealed in the daylight of eternity. Habits, like paths, are the result of constant actions. It is the multitude of daily footsteps which go to and fro which shapes them. Let it light up your daily wanderings to know that there, —in the quiet bracing of the soul to uncongenial duty, the patient bearing of unwelcome burdens, the loving acceptance of unlovely companionship, — and not on the grand occasions, you are making your eternal future. It is the multitude of little actions which makes the great ones.

        J. BALDWIN BROWN

 Our common, everyday lives are the means God implies by which we shall build our Christian lives. A farm or an office are not places to make crops or money, but men.  All the little things about our daily toil are the framework and scaffolding of our spiritual life. 

HENRY DRUMMOND

"Blessed of My Father," that is our eternal name!

 “Then the King will say to those on His right hand, ‘Come, you blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world…”

Matthew 25:34

“Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”

Luke 12:32

Whither, ‘midst falling dew,

While glows the heavens with the last steps of day,

Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue

Thy solitary way?

Vainly the fowler’s eye

Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong,

As, darkly painted on the crimson sky,

Thy figure floats along.

Seek’st thou the plashy brink

Of weedy lake, or marge of river wide,

Or where the rocking billows rise and sink

On the chafed ocean side?

There is a Power whose care

Teaches thy way along that pathless coast, --

The desert and illimitable air, --

Lone  wandering, but not lost.

All day thy wings have fann’d

At that far height, the cold thin atmosphere;

 Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land,

Though the dark of night is near.

And soon that toil shall end,

Soon shalt thou find a summer home and rest,

And scream among thy fellows; reeds shall bend

Soon o’er thy sheltered nest.

Thou’rt gone, the abyss of heaven

Hath swallowed up thy form; yet, on my heart

Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou has given,

And shall not soon depart.

He, who, from zone to zone,

Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight,

In the long way that I must tread alone,

Will lead my steps aright.

“To a Waterfowl”

 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT

         The soul that shuts itself and holds its peace while the world is near grows securer in silence of contemplation, and lets out its gentle thoughts and whispering joys, its hopes or sad fears, unto the listening ear and before the kindly eye of God!  But in souls which have caught something of the beauty of the divine life, prayer in many of its moods becomes more than this. There are times of yearning and longing, far beyond the help of the most hopeful.  There is a prayer which is the voice of the soul pleading its birthright, crying out for its immortality; it is heavenly homesickness.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

1813-1887

"Blessed of My Father," that is our eternal name!  How those words come to us in the tingling stillness of the night, when panic fears oppress our loneliness, and so strangely vex our souls!  How they rise soft and clear above the tolling of the world, in hours of weariness and obstinate temptation!  How they sing songs to the fear of death, and lull it when it wakens and cries, "Blessed of My Father!"

F.W. FABER

1815-1863

                                                                                                                                                 

                                                                                                                                           

"The greater the love, the greater the sorrow..."

He was despised and rejected by men;

A man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief;

And as one from whom men hide their faces,

He was despised, and we esteemed Him not.

 Surely He has borne our griefs,

And carried our sorrows;

Yet we esteemed Him stricken,

Smitten by God, and afflicted.

But He was pierced for our transgressions;

He was crushed for our iniquities;

Upon Him was the chastisement that brought us peace,

And by His stripes we are healed.

Isaiah 53:3-5

O sacred head, now wounded,

With grief and shame weighed down,

Now scornfully surrounded

With thorns, Thine only crown;

O sacred head, what glory!

What bliss, till now was Thine!

Yet, though despised and gory,

I joy to call Thee mine.

What language shall I borrow,

To thank Thee, dearest Friend,

For this, Thy dying sorrow,

Thy pity without end?

Oh! make me Thine forever,

And should I fainting be,

Lord, let me never, never

Outlive my love to Thee.

BERNARD of CLAIRVAUX

His claims were ridiculed, His words of wisdom thrown back on Himself; none were so poor but could afford to despise Him as lower than they, His love was repulsed, surely He drank the bitterest cup of contempt. All His life He walked in the solitude of uncomprehended aims, and at His hour of extremist need appealed in vain for a little solace of companionship, and was deserted by those whom He trusted most. His was a lifelong martyrdom inflicted by men. His was a lifelong solitude which was most utter at the last. And He brought it all on Himself because He would be God’s Servant in being men’s Saviour….

         We shall not rightly estimate the sorrowfulness of Christ’s sorrows, unless we bring to our meditations on them the other thought of His joys. How great these were we can judge, when we remember that He told the disciples that by His joy remaining in them their joy would be full. As much joy then as human nature was capable of from perfect purity, filial obedience, trust, and unbroken communion with God, so much was Jesus’ permanent experience. The golden cup of His pure nature was ever full to the brim with the richest wine of joy. And that constant experience of gladness in the Father and in Himself made more painful the sorrows which He encountered, like a biting wind shrieking round Him, whenever He passed out from fellowship with God in the stillness of His soul into the contemptuous and hostile world. His spirit carrying with it the still atmosphere of the Holy Place, would feel more keenly than any other would have done the jarring tumult of the crowds, and would know a sharper pain when met with greetings in which was no kindness. Jesus was sinless, His sympathy with all sorrow was thereby rendered abnormally keen, and He made others’ griefs His own with an identification born of a sympathy which the most compassionate cannot attain. The greater the love, the greater the sorrow of the loving heart when its love is spurned. The intenser the yearning for companionship, the sharper the pang when it is repulsed. The more one longs to bless, the more one suffers when his blessings are flung off. Jesus was the most sensitive, the most sympathetic, the most loving soul that ever dwelt in flesh. He saw, as none other has ever seen, man’s miseries. He experienced, as none else has ever experienced, man’s ingratitude, and, therefore, though God, even His God, ‘anointed Him with the oil of gladness above His fellows,’ He was ‘a Man of Sorrows,’ and grief was His companion during all His life’s course.

ALEXANDER MACLAREN

Sermons on Isaiah

God Wants to Unburden Your Soul of Guilt

Then He said to her, “Your sins are forgiven.”

…Then He said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you.

Go in peace.”

Luke 7:48,50

“I have swept away your transgressions like a cloud.

I have scattered your sins like the morning mist.

Oh, return to Me, for I have paid the price to set you free.”

Sing, O heavens, for the LORD has done this wondrous thing.

Shout for joy, O depths of the earth!

Break into song, O mountains and forests and every tree!

Isaiah 44:22-3

I hear the Savior say,

Thy strength indeed is small;

Child of weakness, watch and pray,

Find in Me thine all in all.

Jesus paid it all,

All to Him I owe;

Sin had left a crimson stain,

He washed it white as snow.

For nothing good have I

Whereby Thy grace to claim,

I’ll wash my garments white

In the blood of Calv’ry’s Lamb.

And now complete in Him

My robe His righteousness,

Close sheltered ’neath His side,

I am divinely blest.

Elvina Hall~1865

         God is not against you but for you, in all the struggles of life; He wants you to get through safe; wants you to succeed; wants you to conquer; and He will hear your cry out of the deep and help you. And therefore when you find yourselves wrong, utterly wrong, do not cry to this man or that man, “Do you help me; do you set me a little more right before God comes….” Cry to God Himself, to Christ Himself; ask Him to lift you up; ask Him to set you right. Do not be like St. Peter before his conversion, and cry, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord; wait a little till I have risen up, and washed off my stains, and made myself somewhat fit to be seen.”-- No. Cry, “Come quickly, O Lord ­­-- at once -- just because I am a sinful man; just because I am sore let and hindered in running my race by my own sins and wickedness; because I am lazy and stupid; because I am perverse and vicious, therefore raise up Thy power, and come to me, Thy miserable creature, Thy lost child, and with Thy great might succour me. Lift me up, because I have fallen very low; deliver me, for I have plunged out of Thy sound and safe highway into deep mire where no ground is. Help myself I cannot, and if Thou help me not, I am undone.”

         Do so. Pray so. Let your sins and wickedness be to you not a reason for hiding from Christ, who stands by; but a reason, the reason of all reasons, for crying to Christ, who stands by. And then, whether He delivers you by gentle means or by sharp ones, deliver you He will, and set your feet on firm ground, and order your goings, that you may run with patience the race which is set before you along the road of life and the pathway of God’s commandments wherein there is no death.

CHARLES KINGSLEY

Out of the Deep

 “The fact is, that the same moment which brings the consciousness of sin ought to bring also the confession and the consciousness of forgiveness...”

HANNAH WHITALL SMITH