March 29, Good Friday

And when they had sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives.

Matthew 26:30

When in distress to Him we cried,

He heard our sad complaining;

O trust in Him, whate’er betide,

His love is all sustaining;

Triumphant songs of praise

To Him our hearts shall raise;

Now every voice shall say,

“O praise our God alway;”

Let all saints adore Him!

Sir H.W. BAKER

Rejoice Today with One Accord

This is the only record of our Lord’s singing when He was on the earth. It is worthy of special notice that it was just as He was starting out to Gethsemane that He sung a hymn with His disciples. It would not have seemed so strange to us if He had sung that night on the Transfiguration Mount, or the day He entered Jerusalem amid the people’s hosannas, or on some other occasion of great gladness and triumph; but that the only time we hear Him singing should be in the darkest night of His life is very suggestive.

It tells us of the deep gladness that was in the heart of Christ under all His grief and sorrows. He knew the agony into whose black shadows He was about to enter. He saw the cross, too, that stood beyond Gethsemane. Yet He went out toward the darkness with songs of praise on His lips. There is a Scripture word which tells us that “for the joy set before Him He endured the cross, despising the shame.” This was the joy that broke forth here in a hymn of praise. It was the joy of doing the Father’s will and of saving lost souls. We get thus here another glimpse of Christ’s great heart of love.

The secret of Christ’s song here was His looking beyond the garden and the cross; He saw the reward, the glory, the redemption accomplished. If we look only at the sorrow before us, we cannot sing; but if we look on to the joy of victory, and the blessedness of the reward, and the ripened fruits that will come from the suffering, we can sing too as we enter the sorest trial.

J.R. MILLER

1840-1912

Be as a bird perched on a frail branch that she feels bending beneath her, still she sings away all the same, knowing she has wings.

VICTOR HUGO

1802-1885

March 23

…Casting all your care upon Him, for He cares for you.

1 Peter 5:7

Calm me, my God, and keep me calm,

Soft resting on Thy breast;

Sooth me with holy hymn and psalm,

And bid my spirit rest.

Calm as the ray of sun or star

Which storms assail in vain;

Moving unruffled through earth’s war,

The eternal calm to gain.

Horatius Bonar

Every word of this precious verse is golden. And the fact of its standing here as a divine command is a proof not only of what is possible for us to do, but of what God is prepared to enable us to do. His commands are enablings; His words are power words; His light is life. If only you are willing to live the glad, free, carefree life, and dare to step out on the waves of His care, you will find that, with the resolve to obey, there will come from Him the wondrous power that makes obedience possible. 

And it is in the highest degree necessary to obey this precept. So only can we be peaceful and strong. We cannot stand the strain of both work and worry.  Two things come between our souls and unshadowed fellowship with God, sin and care. And we must be as resolute to cast our care on the Lord as to confess our sins to Him, if we would walk in the light as He is in the light. One yelping dog may break our slumber on the stillest night. One care may break our peace and hide the face of God, and bring a funeral pall over our souls. We must cast all our care on Him if we would know the blessedness of unshadowed fellowship. 

There may be pain—but no doubt of the Father’s love, no worry about the issues, no foreboding as to the long future, which to the eye of faith shines like the horizon rim of the sea on which the sun is shining in its utmost splendor while dark clouds brood overhead. 

Care, according to the Greek word, is that which divides and distracts the soul, which diverts us from present duty to weary calculations of how to meet conditions which may never arrive. Fret; worry; anxiety; the habit of anticipating evil; crossing bridges before we reach them; the permission of foreboding fears about the future; all that attitude of mind which broods over the mistakes of the past and dwells on the shadows which coming events may cast, rather than on the love and will of God—this is Care. 

Alas for some! They always spend their lives thus. One long, weary monotone of anxiety—struggling against winds and waves, instead of walking over the crests of the billows; treading a difficult, stony pass, instead of being borne along in one of the twenty thousand chariots of God. 

How infinitely better to cast our care upon the strong, broad shoulders of Christ! Treat cares as you treat sins. Hand them over to Jesus one by one as they occur. Commit them to Him. Roll them upon Him. Make them His. By an act of faith look to Him, saying, “This, Lord, and this, and this, I cannot bear. Thou hast taken my sins; take my cares: I lay them upon Thee, and trust Thee to do for me all, and more than all, I need. I will trust and not be afraid.” 

Let us trust Him. Tongue cannot tell the completeness, the delicacy, the tender thoughtfulness of the care that will gather and shelter us, as the nervous, careful hen gathers her brood under her wing.

F.B. MEYER

Tried by Fire

March 11

Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another, for “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.”

 Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time He may exalt you.

1 Peter 5:5-6

Wide open are Thine arms,

A fallen world to embrace;

To take to love and endless rest

Our whole forsaken race.

Lord, I am sad and poor,

But boundless is Thy grace;

Give me the soul transforming joy

For which I seek Thy face.

BERNARD of CLAIRVAUX

12^th Century

         One of the chief signs of the unrenewed spirit is the haughty self-complacency with which it bears itself.  To resent an insult; to stand upon fancied rights; to vaunt superiority; to show “the silver, and gold, and spices, and precious ointment,” in the ostentatious and vainglorious way which brought reproof and chastisement on Hezekiah—this is the manner of the world.

And this insidious sin of pride dies hard in the child of God; nay, it may be questioned if ever we shall be perfectly quit of it on this side of the gates of pearl. Christian men are proud of their houses, and carriages, and wealth, and position.  Christian women are proud of their person, and dress, and rank and children. Christian ministers are proud of their influence, and sermons, and the admiration they receive. A bit of flattery, a newspaper notice, a conscious success, are food enough for pride to grow fat upon, until it begins to fancy that all the world is thinking of it, and feels that the most extravagant praise is but a grudging tribute to its worth.

        

May I not press this upon my readers further, urging each to consider his own character and behavior in the light of these words. We must be convicted of pride before we seek the grace of true humility. Pride is one of the most detestable of sins; yet does it find lodgment in earnest souls, though we often speak of it by some lighter name. We call it independence, self-reliance.  We do not always discern it in the hurt feeling, which retires into itself, and nurses its sorrows in a sulk.

        

The metaphor used in this passage is surely derived from that most touching incident on the eve of the crucifixion, when, though having present to His mind His origin and destiny, our Lord took upon Him the form of a servant. “Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands, and that He had come from God and was going to God, rose from supper and laid aside His garments, took a towel and girded Himself.  After that, He poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet, and to wipe them with the towel with which He was girded.”(John 13: 3-5) What a lovely vesture did that stripping that towel, that lowly attitude, between them make! Not even when He stood radiant on the Mount of Transfiguration did He seem to be dressed so fair.  Surely Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed as He.  And so the injunction comes to us all, that we should adopt the same livery, and each one don His garb. “Yea, all of you be subject one to another, and be clothed with humility.”

        

“His sweet dews and showers of grace slide off the mountains of pride, and fall on the low valleys of humble hearts, making them pleasant and fertile. The swelling heart, puffed up with a fancy of fullness, hath no room for grace. The humble heart is most capacious, and, as being emptied and hallowed, can hold most.” (Leighton)

F.B. MEYER

Tried by Fire