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
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
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. "Whosoever offers praise glorifies Me" (Ps. 50:23). And the Psalmist also said,
"Every day will I bless Thee, and I will praise Thy name
for ever and ever" (Ps. 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 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 C. Upham
Now after six days Jesus took Peter, James, and John his brother, led them up on a high mountain by themselves; and He was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and His clothes became as white as the light
Matthew 17:1-2
Then a cloud formed, overshadowing them, and a voice came out of the cloud, “This is My beloved Son, listen to Him!” All at once they looked around and saw no one with them anymore, except Jesus alone.
Mark 9:7-8
Deep into the night, the sky begins to darken,
Glimmers of hope start filling the midnight sky.
I lift up my eyes, my spirit begins to hearken,
For One who shepherds the stars, reigns on high.
Like a flock, You lead forth the vast starry host,
Calling out each one by name as their Maker.
In the Name of the living God, will I boast,
Possessor of great strength and absolute power.
ch:
Jesus, You shine with radiance, clear and bright,
More brilliant than the sun, moon, and stars of light.
Praise and glory to You in the highest height,
Mighty Savior, God of uncreated Light.
Who has measured the great waters in his hand?
Who has weighed the mountains upon a scale?
Yet, it’s my name You call, my destiny You’ve planned;
Shepherding with a love that does not fail.
C.A. TAYLOR
Shepherd of the Stars
Who can adequately speak of the great scene on the Holy Mount, when heaven and earth met and became one, and the body of Jesus shone with a dazzling brightness; of the glory which came down from heaven and covered the Savior and His companions; and of the voice that came out of the excellent glory and proclaimed the Son of Man to be the Son of God? It must be admitted that these things are far above our loftiest conceptions.
All the bright and blessed things God’s people know on earth are but feeble foretastes of the joys of heaven. Yes, I have a word of comfort for thee, aged pilgrim. Thine eyes, often so tear-stained, red with weeping, weary with anxiety, perhaps half-blinded with infirmity, or dim with age, thine eyes shall see the King in His beauty.
When Simeon beheld the infant Savior in the Temple, he said, “Lord, now lettest thou Thy servant depart in peace…For mine eyes have seen Thy salvation.” To the pure in heart, it is promised that they shall see God. When our Lord prayed for His elect before his Passion, He said, “Father, I will that they also, whom Thou has given me, may be with Me where I am; that they may behold My glory, which Thou hast given Me.” And John says, “Now are we the sons of God; and it doth not yet appear what we shall be; but we know that when He shall appear, we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is.” To see Him, then, is the final consummation of all. There is nothing more held out to man, as nothing higher could be. For this great vision our whole life here is but a preparation. This is the end of creation, the end of redemption, the end of struggle and victory. They to whom it is vouchsafed will have reached the greatest height and the most perfect bliss that any creature can attain.
JAMES HASTINGS
Greatest Texts in the Bible -Isaiah
It is when I have lifted up mine eyes that I am impressed with the solitary majesty of the Son of Man; it is in the elevation of my own moral view that I see Him to be what He is—the King of kings. When my moral view was not lofty, I thought of Him as of other men; I would have built for Moses and Elijah tabernacles by His side. But when the transfiguration glory touched me, I awoke to His glory—His solitary, unrivaled glory. I saw Him to be the chief among ten thousand, and fairer than the children of men. Moses and Elijah faded from the mountain’s brow, and He stood alone in peerless unapproachable splendour; I saw no man there save Jesus only.
GEORGE MATHESON
Matthew 28:9-10
“Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; and yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.”
Matthew 6:28-29
My love, My fair one, come!”
Yea, Lord! Thy Passion over,
We know this life of ours
Hath passed from death and winter
To leaves and budding flowers;
No more Thy rain of weeping
In drear Gethsemane;
No more the clouds and darkness,
That veiled Thy bitter Tree.
Our Easter Sun is risen!
And yet we slumber long,
And need Thy Dove’s sweet pleading
To waken prayer and song.
Oh, breathe upon our deadness,
Oh, shine upon our gloom;
Lord, let us feel Thy presence
And rise and live and bloom.
Jackson Mason~1889
O voice of the Belovèd!
Consider the lilies of the fields. We must take our Lord’s words exactly. He is speaking of the lilies, the bulbous plants which spring into flower in countless thousands every spring over the downs of Eastern lands. All the winter they are dead, unsightly roots, hidden in the earth. But no sooner does the sun of spring shine upon their graves, than they rise into sudden life and beauty, as it pleases God, and every seed takes its own peculiar body. Sown in corruption, they are raised in incorruption; sown in weakness, they are raised in power; sown in dishonour, they are raised in glory; delicate, beautiful in colour, perfuming the air with fragrance; types of immortality, fit for the crowns of angels.
Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. For even so is the Resurrection of the dead. Yes, not without a divine providence —yea, a divine inspiration —has the blessed Eastertide been fixed, by the Church of all ages, as the season when the earth shakes off her winter’s sleep; when the birds come back, and the flowers begin to bloom, when every seed which falls into the ground and dies, and rises again with a new body, is a witness to us of the Resurrection of Christ; and a witness, too, that we shall rise again; that in us, as in it, life shall conquer death; when every bird that comes back to sing and build among us, every flower that blows, is a witness to us of the Resurrection of the Lord and of our Resurrection….
They obey the call of the Lord, the Giver of Life, when they return to life, as a type and a token to us of Christ their Maker, who was dead and is alive again, who was lost in hell on Easter eve, and was found again in heaven forevermore. And so the resurrection of the earth from her winter’s sleep, commemorates to us, as each blessed Eastertide comes round, the Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, and is a witness to us that someday life shall conquer death, light conquer darkness, righteousness conquer sin, joy conquer grief; when the whole creation, which groaneth and travaileth in pain until now, shall have brought forth that of which it travaileth in labour —even the new heavens and the new earth, wherein shall be neither sighing nor sorrow, but God shall wipe away tears from all eyes.
CHARLES KINGSLEY
Out of the Deep -1880
And while they were eating, He took some bread, and after a blessing He broke it; and gave it to them, and said, “Take it; this is My body.”
And He took a cup, and when He had given thanks, He gave it to them; and they all drank from it.
And He said to them, “This is My blood of the covenant, which is to be shed on behalf of many."
"Truly I say to you, I shall never again drink of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God.”
And after singing a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives.
Mark 14:22-26
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 griefs 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.
We can go forward with joy to meet sorrow and sacrifice when we are doing our Father’s will. We should learn to sing as we enter life’s valleys of shadow. It is a great thing to be able to sing as we work and sing as we suffer. 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
Come Ye Apart
In the mid silence of the voiceless night,
When, chased by airy dreams, the slumbers flee,
Whom, in the darkness, doth my spirit seek,
O God, but Thee?
And if there be a weight upon my breast,
Some vague impression of the day foregone,
Scarce knowing what it is, I fly to Thee
And lay it down.
Or if it be the heaviest that comes,
In token of anticipated ill,
My bosom takes no heed of what it is,
Since ‘t it is Thy will.
For oh! in spite of past and present care,
Or anything besides, how joyfully
Passes that almost solitary hour,
My God, with Thee!
More tranquil than the stillness of the night,
More peaceful than the stillness of that hour,
More blest than anything, my bosom lies
Beneath Thy power.
For what is there on earth that I desire,
Of all that it can give or take from me?
Or whom in heaven doth my spirit seek,
O God, but Thee?
Unknown hymn found treasured up in a humble cottage in England
I do not know when I have had happier times in my soul, than when I have been sitting at work, with nothing before me but a candle and a white cloth, and hearing no sound but that of my own breath, with God in my soul and heaven in my eye…. I rejoice in being exactly what I am, —a creature capable of loving God, and who as long as God lives, must be happy. I get up and look for a while out of the window, and gaze at the moon and stars, the work of an Almighty hand. I think of the grandeur of the universe, and then sit down, and think myself one of the happiest beings in it.
A Poor English Woman in the 18th century
In a world where there is so much to ruffle the spirit’s plumes, how needful that entering into the secret of His pavilion, which will alone bring it back to composure and peace! In a world where there is so much to sadden and depress, how blessed that communion with Him in whom is the one true source and fountain of all true gladness and abiding joy!
Richard Chenevix Trench
