Easter Morning Devotional '23 "...someday life shall conquer death, light conquer darkness..."

 And as they went to tell His disciples, behold, Jesus met them, saying, “Rejoice!”  So, they came and held Him by the feet and worshiped Him.  Then Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid. Go and tell My brethren to go to Galilee, and there they will see Me.”

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

 

Good Friday Devotional '23 "This is the only record of our Lord’s singing..."

  

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