George H. Morrison's Old And Beautiful Devotions

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Our Duty Toward Our Equals - Page 3
by George H. Morrison

Failures of Our Duties to Our Equals: In Our Attitude toward Those Who Fail
And in the third place, is there not a proof of this in the attitude of society towards its failures? I do not wish to seem to speak unkindly, yet nothing is gained by shutting the eyes to facts. Now suppose a man to be prospering in the world, is he not a target for a good deal of malevolence? Is it not rarely that you hear him generously judged, with a noble forgetfulness of his faults? But let that man meet with some great reverses, and be crushed under a series of disasters, and I need scarcely tell you what usually follows. There may be one or two who say "I told you so," and who gloat over the misfortune of a brother. There are far more who are genuinely sorry, and who forget their former bitterness of judgment. And now for the first time they become generous, and they forget old grudges and offences, and they do it, mark you, then and then alone when their neighbor has passed from his equality. Let him recover himself and take his former place, and the snarling is certain to begin again. The bitterness that was withering for a season will spring up in the new sunshine of prosperity. From which we gather that it is an easy thing to be generous and kind to our inferiors, but one of the hardest things in life to be just and generous to our equals.

Harder to Execute Ones Duties to Equals Than to Inferiors and Superiors

If then, that be a fact, and a fact I think that cannot be gainsaid, it is surely worth our while to ask what is the reason of a thing so strange. One would have thought that, of all our duties, those to our equals would have been easiest. One would have thought that our duties to inferiors would have been the hardest to perform. And yet it is not so—it is the opposite—our hardest ethic is that of our equality, and the reason, I take it, is not far to seek. It is this, that in all our intercourse with inferiors, there is no place for jealousy or envy. There is nothing to interfere with our self-love; there is no possibility of competition. And therefore in all intercourse with them, there is a sense of shelter and security; an utter absence of those irritations which are inevitable with our social equals. We never dream of envying the poor when our Christian duty takes us among the poor. We are never jealous of the weary sufferer, when we go to visit him upon his sickbed. Our health is an immeasurable asset—our social position gives us a certain standing—we are treated with a certain deference and respect, which sometimes may be the deadliest flattery. Let no one think I am saying a word against the Christian duty of compassion. But what I do say is that as a means of discipline, as a means of searching and of bracing character, our duties to our equals are a far surer instrument than are our duties to inferiors. In them we are out upon the open. in them we get as surely as we give. In them we are constantly tempted to be jealous—constantly tempted to assert ourselves. And therefore are they very hard to do, and being hard are very blessed, giving to character a strong sincerity which no other duties can supply. A man may be perfectly true to his superiors, and yet be a cringing and miserable creature. A man may be wonderfully kind to his inferiors, and yet live all the time in a fool's paradise. But a man who moves as a man among his equals, and is just and generous and kind to them. is moving under the eye of day, and fighting his battle on the open field.

Our Reluctance to Deal with Equals

And that is why there is a certain cowardice in the kind of life which certain people affect. I mean when socially, and not for the sake of service, they surround themselves with their inferiors. It may be a bad thing when one is overanxious to move in higher circles than his own. It is very often associated with vulgarity. But it seems to me it is a worse thing, in its net result upon the character, when one deliberately takes the other course, and consorts habitually with inferiors. Instead of the give and take of equal comradeship, there is then the poisonous atmosphere of deference. Instead of the buffet and the blow of argument, there is the gentle flattery of acquiescence. Instead of the friendship that shows us what we are, and teaches us our faults, and braces us, there is the purring of those whom we honor with our company, till we grow more self-satisfied than ever. It is not thus that character is made. It is fashioned where all the winds are blowing. it never ripens in that soft seclusion which the society of inferiors affords. It ripens in the frankness of equality, where one is not afraid to meet another, and where the frets and jars are as medicinal as the kindliest word of benediction.

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[nChrist]

Our Duty Toward Our Equals - Page 4
by George H. Morrison

The Hardest Trials Are Those That Reach Us from Equals

And that leads me to say this in passing, and it is well that we should not forget it. Perhaps there are no trials so hard to bear as the trials that reach us from our equals. The psalmist, you remember, felt that when he was suffering from an act of treachery. What made it doubly hard to bear was this, that it was perpetrated by a man his equal. Had it been anyone else he could have borne it—anyone mightier or less than he—but the sting of it all first lay in this, that it was an equal who was base. As it was then, so is it still today, and it helps us to be strong when we remember it. Trials from inferiors are bad enough, trials from superiors are worse; but trials from our equals are worst of all, and I shall tell you why it is so. The reason is that trials from our inferiors are trials from which we always can escape. We can return again to our own levels, and leave thus the sphere of our vexations. But from the trials of our equals there is no such refuge—our equals are our habitual environment—and therefore always, every day we live, we are exposed to the buffet or the thorn. It is thus that the trials of our nearest may be blessed in a more certain way than any others. There is no one we can fly to except God; there is no one we can lean on except God. Tried by inferiors we have still our equals, in whose society we are secure. Tried by our equals every refuge fails, and "hangs my helpless soul on Thee."

Try Your Character by Your Attitude toward Your Equals

And so, in closing, I would urge upon you to test and try your character that way. Be chary of accepting any verdict, except the verdict of equality. Distrust the subtle flattery of deference. There is no self-knowledge to be gained that way. Distrust the judgment of the poor and needy, whom in your warmth of compassion you have helped. If you want to know yourself go to your equals—find what you think of them, and they of you. Reckon yourself by what you are at home, or with your brother merchant or your brother minister. It is thus and thus alone we learn the truth, and when we learn the truth we are never far from Christ. Seeing ourselves, we see our need of Him, and in that sight is the beginning of salvation. Driven from the rest of self-esteem, so easily fostered by our very pity, we hear Him saying to us irresistibly, "Come unto me .... and I will give you rest."

____________________

George H. Morrison Devotions

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July 4

Sleep and Death - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

The damsel is not dead, but sleepeth— Mar_5:39
This thy brother was dead, and is alive again— Luk_15:32

Death as a Fact and What Christ Thought of It

I wish to speak for a little while on some of our Lord's references to death. I wish to discover in what light He viewed that dark experience of our mortality. You will observe I am not asking your attention to the question of the life beyond the grave. That is another theme. But here we shall look at death just as a fact, as joy and sorrow and love and hate are facts, and ask what our Savior has spoken about that. For those of us who believe in Christ as Lord, it is supremely important to discover that. But I venture to think it is scarcely less important for those of you who take a lower view. For the words of Jesus Christ, whoever Christ was, have influenced the world and altered history in a way as profound as it is unapproached. When you think, whoever Jesus was, of the tremendous influence of His words, when you think that they will still be winged when yours and mine are dead, it becomes the duty of every thoughtful person, who makes any pretence to the balance of true culture, to give the words of Christ his first attention. It is important to know what Plato thought of death. It is important to know what Hegel thought of death. But for men and women living in a world that has felt the terrific impact of Christ's words, to know what Christ has said on such a theme is the primary duty of intelligence.

Jesus Spoke Little of the Fact of Death

Now when we study Jesus with this end in view, there is one thing which immediately impresses us. It is that Jesus in His ministry spoke comparatively little about death. Familiar with it in the home at Galilee, for Joseph had died when Jesus was still there; lighting oftentimes in boyish wanderings on ghostly sepulchres among the hills, there is no sign that He brooded upon death, nor let it color His imagination, nor that He lived, as men have sometimes lived, with the shadow of death forever by His side. That He spoke much of the life beyond the grave is a fact, of course, which nobody disputes. There is indeed a powerful school today which interprets everything in terms of eschatology. But of the fact of death— that shrouded enemy which lays its icy hand on all humanity— of that He spoke comparatively little. Now that at once separates Jesus from those Stoical teachers who were already beginning to take the ear of Rome. For they, as Bacon has so wisely put it, made death more terrible by dwelling on it so. They thought to conquer death by gazing at it, till familiarity should beget contempt, and instead of contempt there came a haunting terror on the men and women of the Roman Empire. A similar thing has happened more than once in the long story of the Christian Church. Inspired by the passion of asceticism, men have feasted their eyes upon the grave. And the singular thing is that when we turn to Jesus, with whom the story of the Church began, you find wonderfully little of all that. Whatever Jesus feasted His eyes upon, He never feasted them upon the grave. You can never imagine Him a mediaeval saint, clasping a human skull within a charnel-house. But you can always imagine Him among the fields, feasting His heart upon the bending corn, and on the innocent merriment of little children, and on the first glimmerings of human love.

Jesus Speaks Little of Death in Spite of Its Universality

This comparative silence grows more notable when you bear in mind two considerations. The first is the old familiar commonplace that death is a universal thing. There have been teachers who have avoided universal themes and loved to handle exceptional experiences. Some of our finest plays, like Hamlet, deal with experiences of the rarest kind. But Jesus deliberately chose the universal, and dealt with what is common to humanity, and touched with the finger of a son of man the strings that God hath put on every harp. The sorrows He soothes are universal sorrows; the joys He shares in are universal joys. The questions He answers are universal questionings; the hopes He kindles are universal hopes. Yet here is death, the universal leveler, stealing with equal foot to every door, and Jesus speaks very little about that.

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[nChrist]

Sleep and Death - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

Jesus Speaks Little of Death in Spite of Its Significance to Himself

The other consideration which makes the silence notable is the significance to Christ of His own death. That His own death was profoundly important in His eyes no unbiased reader of the Gospels can deny. When He was deeply stirred He spoke of it. It was the one topic of the transfiguration. He watched with eagerness for every sign of readiness that He might unfold its meaning to the twelve. And yet though He saw the coming of the cross, and knew that His triumph was to include a grave, the theme of the grave was rarely on His lips. Even when death was standing on the threshold, it did not form the theme of His discourse. It is not death that moves with awful mien through the glorious discourse of the upper chamber. It is a message more gladdening than death—it is the music of celestial joy—it is tidings of peace that the world cannot give, and at its darkest cannot take away. On that night on which He was betrayed, the shadow of death was on the heart of Jesus. On that night, under the olive trees, He cried, "If it be possible, let this cup pass from Me." Yet on that night, with the finger of death upon Him, the talk of Jesus was no more of death than in the glad days when He had watched the lilies, and taken the little children in His arms.

His Silence Could Not Be Interpreted as Indifference

Now that is very suggestive and significant, and it clearly calls for some interpretation. Let me dismiss in passing one interpretation which might possibly occur to certain minds. It might occur to some that this reserve of Jesus was only the superior silence of indifference. It might seem that Jesus spoke little about death, because He scorned the very thought of death. But I venture to say that if you take the Gospels, and study the story of the Master there, you will dismiss that supposition as untenable. When you and I are silent on a matter, it does not necessarily mean we are indifferent. Sometimes the subject of which the heart is fullest is that on which the lips are strangely still. And as there are thoughts that lie too deep for tears, so are there thoughts that lie too deep for utterance, and men detect them not by any speech, but by a look, or a handclasp, or a tear. Now think of Jesus at the grave of Lazarus, when He was face to face with death. Look at Him—what is that upon His cheek?—it is the dewy glistening of tears. And then a bend of the road reveals the sepulchre, and there is death, in ravage and in victory, and Jesus groans in spirit and is troubled. Whatever else that means, there is one thing that it emphatically means. It means that Jesus, indifferent to so much, was not indifferent to the final tragedy. He wept; He groaned in spirit; He was troubled. He shared in the anguish of the orphaned heart. Whatever His silence, it was not the silence of a serene and philosophic scorn.

Jesus Spoke of Death as Sleep

Dismissing that, then, we may advance a little if we remember Jesus' favorite name for death. I think there can be little question that the familiar name of Christ for death was sleep. I do not insist on the raisings from the dead, though they at once suggest a waking out of sleep. I do not insist on that, though all these raisings at once suggest the thought of sleep to me. But I keep close to Christ's recorded sayings, on two occasions when He confronted death, and on both of them He spoke of death as sleep. Entering the darkened home of Jairus, He said, "The maiden is not dead, but sleepeth." Learning the news that Lazarus was gone, He said at once, "Our friend Lazarus sleepeth." And these expressions, springing from the heart, and of an authenticity that none can question, tell me that Jesus spoke of death as sleep.

He Did Not Speak of Death us Sleep Poetically

But now it will occur to you at once that this is a thought common to all poetry. I know indeed no literature in the world where death is not spoken in terms of sleep. You will find it in the philosophy of Greece, and you will light on it in the poetry of Rome. The Jews were perfectly familiar with it, for they spoke of their dead as sleeping with their fathers. Dante accepts it as a commonplace; Chaucer speaks of the living and the sleeping; and Shakespeare tells us in words that are immortal how our little life is rounded with a sleep. Now the question I want to ask is this: was our Lord talking as a poet talks? Was He simply using a poetic figure when He said, "The maiden is not dead, but sleepeth"? I have been led to think, for reasons I shall give you, that Christ was not talking as a poet talks, but was using language of intense reality. I certainly hold that Jesus was a poet. I think He was a poet to His fingertips. If poetry be simple, sensuous, and passionate, there never was speech more poetical than His. And yet, granting all that without reserve, I am constrained to think that when Christ spoke of death as sleep, men felt that He spoke, not in poetic figure, but in sober earnestness and truth. Let me suggest to you this one consideration, based on the passage at hand.

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Sleep and Death - Page 3
by George H. Morrison

If I Were the One to Call Death Sleep

Suppose I were called, as I am often called, to a home that was under the shadow of bereavement. Suppose that a daughter of twelve years old were dead, and that I went in gently to where the body lay. What words would rise more naturally to my lips, when I had drawn the napkin from the brow, than just the words "How peacefully she sleeps"! They have risen to my lips a score of times, and never once were they misunderstood. I have said them to fathers, to mothers, to brothers, and to sisters, and found I was only uttering what they felt. There is never a trace of misinterpretation there is always immediate and full response—when in the presence of the quiet dead we whisper that the little life is rounded with a sleep. But now suppose I turned to the sorrowing father, and said with a glowing eye, She is not dead! Suppose I turned to him, and with tremendous earnestness said, "I tell you she is not dead, but sleeping." First he would look at me with incredulity; then it would flash on him I was beside myself, and then, in the frantic unsettlement of grief, the house would echo with derisive laughter.

Those Who Heard Him Knew He Meant What He Said about Death Being But Sleep
I want you to remember that that is exactly what happened to our Lord, and that such conduct is utterly incredible if Christ was speaking as a poet speaks. The Jews were far more poetical than we are, and they loved metaphor and all poetic imagery, and they were perfectly familiar from their literature with the figure of death as the last sleep. And yet when Jesus stood beside the dead, and said what all of us have said, "She sleepeth," somehow they utterly misunderstood Him, and heaped on Him the insult of derision. Others had come to Jairus' house that morning, and had said gently, "How peacefully she sleeps." And the father and mother, looking on their loved one, had understood at once that kindly sympathy. And then came Christ, and said, She is not dead—I tell you she is not dead, but sleeping—and Him they laughed to scorn. That scorn to me is utterly inexplicable if Christ was speaking in poetic metaphor. There must have been something in His eye and tone that challenged the plainest evidence of sense. They felt instinctively that in the mind of Christ their little daughter was not dead, but living, although her eyes were closed, and all her fingers motionless, and there was not a quiver of breath upon her lips. In other words, this was not death to Christ, and every hearer felt He meant it so. Whatever death was in the thought of Jesus, it was not this ceasing of the heart to beat. And that is why these lovers of all imagery, who would have understood us had we said she sleeps, poured upon Him their frenzy of derision.

For Christ Spiritual Death Was More Real Than Physical Death. Hence the Latter He Called Sleep

And so am I gradually led to the conviction that this was not what Jesus meant by death at all. In the habitual thought of that supreme intelligence, death was something darker and more terrible. It was not death to Him when the silver chord was loosed, nor when the pitcher was broken at the fountain. It was not death to Him when the strong men bowed themselves, and when the daughters of music were brought low. All that was life, though it was life asleep, in the mighty arms of the eternal God, and death was something more terrible than that. The maiden is not dead, but sleepeth; but— this my son was dead and is alive again. The maiden is not dead, but sleepeth; but— let the dead bury their dead. The maiden is not dead, but sleepeth; but— he who believeth upon Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live. Christ did not find the dead in Jairus' house, nor in any sepulchre among the Galilean hills. He saw the dead where men and women were— in the synagogue and in the market and the home. And so Christ does not find the dead where the flowers are withering on the grave, but here where men are, and where women are, who have a name to live and yet are dead. If half the anguish of the open grave were felt for those who are living useless lives, if half the tears that fall upon the coffin fell upon hearts that are frivolous or obdurate, not only would we be nearer Christ in His deepest thought about humanity, but we should know more than we have ever known of the joy that cometh in the morning. For love and faith and prayer are powerless to bring again the dear one who is lost. No lifting heavenward of anguished hands will give us back again the one we loved. But "this my son was dead and is alive again"—and there is music and dancing in the home tonight, and there is joy in heaven, where the Father dwelleth, over one sinner that repenteth.

____________________

George H. Morrison Devotions

Dist. Worldwide in the Great Freeware Bible Study package called
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(The goal of Rick Meyer is to distribute excellent Bible Study
Software to every country on earth in their own language FREE
of charge, and that goal gets closer by the day.)
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[nChrist]

July 5

The Rich Man and Lazarus

There was a certain rich man, which was clothed in purple and fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day— Luk_16:14

The Passion Was the Same

Our Lord had been speaking against the sin of covetousness, when the Pharisees, who were themselves lovers of money (Luk_16:14), began to ridicule Him. In these circumstances the parable was spoken; it was meant to enforce the warnings against mammon (Luk_16:13). And there is something highly significant in the unexpected turn that the enforcing takes. Between the typical Pharisee and this rich man there was little outward resemblance. The bitterest enemy could not accuse the Pharisees of faring sumptuously every day. Whatever their faults were, they were austere and rigid. They honestly despised luxurious living. Yet in drawing this picture of luxurious living, there is no doubt that Jesus was thinking first of them. Now, where lay the point of contact, do you think? It lay in a common love of money. The Pharisee loved it, and he secretly hoarded it. The rich man loved it for the pleasure it bought. Each showed his passion for wealth in his own way, but the same passion was supreme in both. Learn, then, how one deep-seated vice may fashion itself in the most diverse garbs. A hundred miles may separate two rivers, but for all that, they flow from the one lake. Our eyes might fail to discover kinship between the secret hoarding of the Pharisee and the prodigal squandering of this rich man; but in the eyes of Christ, both ran down to a common selfishness, and to a common heart neglect of God.

The Strange Contrasts of the Worm

Here are two men, and day after day there is not the space of twenty yards between them, yet a distance like the sea divides the two. The one is rich, the other is a beggar. The one has every dainty on his table, the other gathers the crumbs to stay his hunger. The one is clothed in the fine linen of Egypt; the other on the doorstep is in rags. The one has servants to do his smallest bidding, they are fanning him in the long hot afternoon to drive away the flies; the other has no one to drive away the dogs when they gather round him and lick his sores with their unclean tongues. It would be impossible to conceive a greater contrast—and there is only a porch and a door between the two! Yet with such contrasts all the world is teeming. Do you live in a roomy terrace in a great city? There is want and misery within a stone's throw. Is your home a little villa in some quiet town? Learn something of that lane that you pass on Sundays going to the church. Are you a farmer's daughter? Who was that tramp that the dog barked off today? Wherever you are, there is a Lazarus near.

The Changed Conditions of Eternity

A great philosopher has written in his books that we should view all things sub specie oeternitatis. The boys who are learning Latin will tell us what that means: it means that we ought to consider things under the light, so to speak, of eternity. Now, I feel that it was under that eternal light that Jesus was moving when He spoke this parable. And why? Because we are told the beggar's name, but we are not told the name of the rich man. When a great man gives a public banquet, the newspapers tell us all about it. We get the names of the host and of all his guests, and we hear, too, how the ladies were dressed; but we never dream of finding in the newspaper the names and addresses of the poor around the gates. But when Jesus tells the story of this feasting, and tells it as it is written in the books of God, the beggar is named—and a noble name he had—and the host is only "a certain rich man." Here the one man is great and he is known; the other is a beggar and a nuisance. Here the one man has everything he wants; the other lives and dies in want of everything. But yonder, in the world beyond the grave, where the wrong is righted, and God's strange ways are justified, Lazarus lies upon the bosom of peace, and the rich man bitterly reaps what he has sown. Do you see the contrast between the now and then ? Do you mark the complete reversal of the lots? It is by such unveilings of eternity, that Christ has eased the problems of the world.

The Sin of the Rich Man Was Selfishness

There was nothing sinful in his being rich—Abraham himself has been a wealthy man. It is not hinted that the rich man of the story had made his money in unlawful ways. He is not charged with oppression of the poor, nor with enriching himself by others' ruin. Had you asked his boon-companions what they thought of him, they would have called him the finest fellow in town. It was neglecting Lazarus that was his sin. His crime was the unrelieved beggar at his gate. And he could not plead that he was ignorant of Lazarus, for he recognized him at once in Abraham's bosom. It was not want of knowledge, then, but want of thought that was the innermost secret of his tragedy. He was so engrossed in his own life of pleasure, that his heart was dulled to the suffering at his door; and every day he lived he grew more selfish till at last he went to his own place. Let the children learn how needful it is to begin doing kindly deeds when they are young. We grow so accustomed to misery by and by, that our hearts turn callous before we are aware. It is a priceless blessing when the sympathies of childhood are turned into the channel of activity. Caught in their freshness, and expressed in deeds, they form those habits of help and brotherly kindness that were utterly wanting in this rich man's heart.

It Will Never Be Easier to Believe Than Now

Did you ever read of the boy who stood on a muddy road, and who promised God that he would be a Christian if there and then God would dry up the puddles? He wanted a miracle to make him a believer; he thought he would become Christ's if he got that. Jesus here tells us that is a great mistake. It will never be easier to believe than now. The man who is not persuaded by the Gospel will never be persuaded by a ghost. Let no one wait, then, before accepting Jesus, for something extraordinary to happen. That something is never going to happen, and if it did, it would leave us as we were. Now is the time, under God's silent guidance, and in the quiet morning of our days, to range ourselves under the conquering banner of the great Captain who lives forevermore.

____________________

George H. Morrison Devotions

Dist. Worldwide in the Great Freeware Bible Study package called
e-Sword by Rick Meyer: http://www.e-sword.net/downloads.html
Full Featured - Outstanding - Completely FREE - No Strings Attached

(The goal of Rick Meyer is to distribute excellent Bible Study
Software to every country on earth in their own language FREE
of charge, and that goal gets closer by the day.)
____________________

[nChrist]

July 6

The Fatal Power of Inattention - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

In hell he lifted up his eyes, being in torments— Luk_16:23

It Wasn't Inhumanity

There is a well-known picture by Gustave Dore, which portrays this parable of the rich man and the beggar. We are shown the rich man in the midst of Oriental luxury, and at the foot of the marble steps the diseased Lazarus. So far the picture is worthy of the genius, for it is vivid and full of rich imagination; but Dore has introduced one other feature which shows that he has misread the Savior's story. Over the beggar an Eastern slave is bending with a scourge of twigs in his uplifted hand. He has been commanded to drive Lazarus away, for his misery is as a death's-head at the feast. And Dore is wrong in introducing that, for our Lord does not hint that the rich man was disturbed—he was not consciously and deliberately cruel; he was only totally and hopelessly indifferent. What wrought the ruin of that pleasure-lover was not inhumanity so much as inattention. It was the fatal power of inattention that drove his barque on to the reef of woe. And on that fatal power of inattention, so strikingly and signally portrayed here, I want to speak a word or two.

I do so under a sense that it is needed, because that heedless spirit is so common. The attitude of innumerable people toward the great questions of the religious life is just the inattentive attitude of the rich man to Lazarus at his gate. There was a time when unbelief was militant, and when men were in arms against the cause of Christ; a time when Voltaire could write "Scratch out the Infamous," and the Infamous was the Redeemer of the world. But you find few militant atheists today—they are like voices crying in the wilderness; what you do find is something far more deadly, it is that height of insult which we call inattention. It is better, sometimes to hate than to ignore, for there is at least something positive in hatred. There is hope in the foe that someday he may prove a worthy friend. But the man who takes his ease and pays no heed is the most difficult of all to deal with; and such is the common temper of today. I have many acquaintances who never come to church, and some who have told me that they never pray. I can hardly think of one among them all who is the defined antagonist of Christ. They are simply inattentive to His claims, and spend their days in utter unconcern, disregarding His presence as completely as the rich man disregarded that of Lazarus.

The Perils of lnattention

How perilous the inattentive spirit is, we have only to open our eyes to see. It is one of the lessons that reach us every day as we walk through the crowded streets of a great city. Readers of Marcus Aurelius will remember how he bases the art of life upon attention. In the jostle and pressure of a modern city that truth has a very literal significance. Well could I understand the Highland farmer moving across the moorland inattentively. There is nothing within hail except the sheep, and the whirring bird that is startled at his tread. But for a man who lives in Glasgow or in London to move inattentively amid the rush of traffic is to augment by a thousand-fold the perils that are inevitable where life is swift and full. Not a day passes but in the city someone is maimed through being inattentive. I might put it in an even grimmer fashion, for every day in the streets someone is killed. They were not drunk, nor were they seeking death: I do not know what the coroner may say about them, but I know that a true verdict would be this: Slain through the fatal power of inattention. Now all that happens, not where life is meager, but where life is rich, and tumultuous, and full. Nowhere is it so perilous to be indifferent as within the sweep of mighty tides of life. And if the life that is revealed in Christ is mightier in its flow than that of Babylon, do you not feel the risks of inattention when that life is at your very door?

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[nChrist]

The Fatal Power of Inattention - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

Again we might throw light upon the matter by considering the common laws of health. There are certain principles with which we are all familiar, and to which we give the name of laws of health. They are written upon the framework of our bodies; they are not many nor are they hard to keep; but they are as certainly the laws of God as any commandment graven in the Decalogue. Now you never meet a man who hates these laws, or breaks them in a spirit of rebellion. But you meet many who are inattentive, and who constantly and recklessly neglect them. And I ask the doctors here whether that inattention is not a rash and perilous behavior, and is not certain in the course of years to bring the body of a man to ruin? You do not need to defy the laws of health to have the body taking vengeance on you. The body avenges far more than defiance; it inevitably avenges inattention. Many a man yet living is in hell, and lifts up his eyes towards heaven being in torments; and at the back of all his torments is not vice, but a persistent and foolish disregard. Now if confessedly that is true of the body, is it incredible that it should hold true of the soul? Are you certain to escape in spiritual things for a line of action that never escapes in physical? On the contrary, the higher that we rise, the more are we likely to suffer for neglect, just because the interests involved are of such tremendous and eternal consequence.

Before passing from this aspect, I should like to say that this is one of the ministries of pain. Whatever other functions pain may have, one is that it serves to fix attention. If there is anything harmful working in the body, it is supremely important that it should be localized, and so comes pain and rings the alarm bell, and concentrates attention on the spot. Pain is the bugle sounding the reveille. Pain is the watchman crying on the walls. We should sleep on while the foe took the citadel were we not roused by the trumpet blast of pain. And though it is hard thus to be roused sometimes, and we are prone to murmur at the summons, yet better, surely, to be rudely wakened, than to be beaten by an insidious foe. We shall never grasp some of God's dealings with us unless we class them with that call of pain. Sometimes it were cruel to let us sleep; sometimes the only kindness is to wake us. And there are sorrows and failures and bitter disappointments which we can never hope to understand, until we realize they are God's stratagems to fix our attention on the things which matter.

Causes of Inattention: Custom

I wish now to say a word or two on some of the causes of this inattention, and perhaps the commonest cause of all is custom. Someone has said that if all the stars ceased shining, and then after a hundred years shone out again, there is not an eye but would be lifted heavenward, and not a lip but would break forth in praise. But the stars were shining when we were little children, and they are there tonight, and will be there tomorrow, and we are so accustomed to that glory that we rarely give to it a single thought. What eyes we have when we travel on the Continent! Every river and hill and castle we observe. But in Glasgow, and by the banks of Clyde, a district rich in story and in beauty, there we are so accustomed to the scenery that we have eyes for nothing but the newspaper. "One good custom doth corrupt the world," and it does so, because it lulls to sleep. It is a bad thing to grow accustomed to the wrong. It may be worse to grow accustomed to the right. And that is why in the history of the church God sends the earthquake and the crash of storm, that men may be roused and startled to concern, and escape the fatal sway of inattention.

Causes of lnattention: Lowered Vitality

Another cause of inattention is a lowered vitality. I think we have all had experience of that. When we are weary, and the flame of life is low, somehow we can neither grasp nor grip. Everything becomes formless and elusive. We read, and hardly understand the page; we work, yet seem to master nothing; we pray, and might be praying to a shadow. Then comes the morning, it may be in the springtime, when the life within us is strong and full again. We are quickened to the finest fibbers of our being, and it is a pure joy to be alive. And at once, in that renewed vitality, we grow alert, attentive, able to grasp and grip; not a page but is radiant with meaning now, not a thing but has a thought behind it. "I am come to give abundant life," says Christ, and to give it here and now, and not tomorrow. Do you not see, then, how fellowship with Christ wakens a man's attention to the highest? It is in that life which may be yours tonight, and for which you do not need to wait till springtide, that you can seize with an attentive faith the things that are unseen and eternal.

Causes of Inattention: Lack of Love

But the deepest cause of inattention is still to be sought. The deepest cause is lack of love. Let a man once love a book, a land, a woman, and he will never be inattentive anymore. When a young man is paying court to somebody, do not the people say "he is paying her attention"? Love and attention, in the people's speech, have practically the same signification. It was love that made the father of the prodigal so quick to discern the figure of his son. It was love that made our Savior give such heed to the cry of the blind beggar by the road. And it is love to Christ which wakens the dulled heart not only to the things that are unseen, but to the infinite value of the soul that is lodged under the raggedness of Lazarus. "Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou Me"—that was the threefold question of the Master. Only when that was clearly ascertained, was there given the commandment, "Feed My sheep." For love is quick to see the need of others, and to read what is hidden from a thousand eyes, and to discern beyond the veil the things that matter; for only he who loveth, knoweth God.

____________________

George H. Morrison Devotions

Dist. Worldwide in the Great Freeware Bible Study package called
e-Sword by Rick Meyer: http://www.e-sword.net/downloads.html
Full Featured - Outstanding - Completely FREE - No Strings Attached

(The goal of Rick Meyer is to distribute excellent Bible Study
Software to every country on earth in their own language FREE
of charge, and that goal gets closer by the day.)
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[nChrist]

July 7

Obedience and Blessing

And it came to pass, that, as they went, they were cleansed— Luk_17:14

The Faith of the Lepers Was in Believing

These words occur in the account of the miracle wrought on the ten lepers. It was in some unknown village, far from the great highways, that these ten miserable creatures met with Christ. Misery makes us "acquainted with strange bedfellows," and leprosy well illustrates that saying. Here were Samaritans and Jews herded together, though the Jews had no dealings with the Samaritans. In suffering and in profound affliction, as in the primary passions of the heart, there is the touch of nature that makes the whole world kin. These ten lepers must have heard of Christ. They recognized Him afar off, and called Him Master. Some of them probably had known that leper (Luk_5:1-39) who was never done telling what Christ had wrought on him. And their faith was shown, not only in crying "Master," but in believing that what He could do for others, He would do, with equal willingness, for them.

A Very Unusual Command

Now whether it was to test them, or for some other reason, it may be quite impossible to say, but the answer of Jesus to the ten was one of the strangest words He ever spake. It was laid down in the Levitical law that a cleansed leper must come before the priest. It was the duty of the priest, according to that law, to give official declaration of the cleansing. One remembers how, when the leprous man was cleansed, in the beautiful story of the fifth chapter, the first order that the Master gave him was to go to the priest in the appointed way. There was nothing strange. Such action was according to the law. That leper, rejoicing in his healing, recognized at once the fitness of the order. But here the same command was given to men whose leprosy was on them still, and whose bodies did not show a trace of cleansing. It was a thoroughly staggering injunction. It would have tried the faith of many a saint. What! ask for a certificate of cleansing when the ghastly signature of death was on them? Yet that was the one thing that the Master said. He gave an order, and called them to obedience. Go show yourselves to the priests.

And then follows that very pregnant word, that as they went they were healed. They left the Master to obey the Master, and, doing so, they won the blessing. Had they remained stock-still in blank astonishment, I do not think we could have wondered at it. Had they discussed the matter, and stood arguing, we should have said that was entirely natural. But the fact remains, that had they acted so, and begged the Lord to deal with them more reasonably, they would have all descended into lepers' graves. The one condition of healing was obedience. Ordered, they must obey. If He was Master as they had cried He was, then let them prove their faith by their obedience. And the beautiful thing is, that as they went, taking the road that led away from Him, gradually they grew conscious of their healing. It was their obedience that the Lord rewarded. He was testing their faith by their response. Not everyone who calls Him Master is ready for the dynamic of His virtue. Quietly to do what He commands, and to do it without questioning or argument, is the appointed highway to revival. These men's knowledge of the Lord was scanty. Their faith, at the best, was rudimentary. But at any rate, here was a plain command, given by One whom they had called their Master. And all they longed for, the passing of their plague, their enrolment again in the brotherhood of man, sprang out of immediate obedience.

They Obeyed Even Though They Did Not Understand

One notes, too, that the command they got was one they could not hope to understand. It was the very last thing they were expecting. Had He touched them with His touch of power they would have hailed Him then and there as their Deliverer. Probably they were expecting that, from the wonderful stories they had heard. But to be turned away, without one gracious word, and sent on what must have seemed a bootless errand, that was something they would not understand. I believe they were disappointed men. This was so utterly different from their dreams. It was with heavy hearts and downcast mien that they set out on the commanded journey. But the point is that they went, whatever the anguish in their hearts, and as they went they were healed. Obeying, though they could not comprehend, though everything was dark and difficult: obeying, though the road they had to travel seemed to take them far away from Him, they were revived, radiant health returned, they were no longer outcasts from society. Controlled by the mastership of Christ, they found themselves in the brotherhood of man. I believe that many who are praying for new revival ought really to be praying for new obedience. It is as we go on the commanded road that we experience the commanded blessing. Let the Church obey the command of the Lord Jesus, and with enthusiasm evangelize the nations, and, as she goes, she will be healed.

____________________

George H. Morrison Devotions

Dist. Worldwide in the Great Freeware Bible Study package called
e-Sword by Rick Meyer: http://www.e-sword.net/downloads.html
Full Featured - Outstanding - Completely FREE - No Strings Attached

(The goal of Rick Meyer is to distribute excellent Bible Study
Software to every country on earth in their own language FREE
of charge, and that goal gets closer by the day.)
____________________

[nChrist]

July 8

Fainting in Prayer - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

Men ought always to pray, and not to faint— Luk_18:1

Jesus Taught Men to Pray

This is one of the passages in which our Lord gave encouragement to prayer. He taught on many different occasions, that men ought always to pray and not to faint. Our Lord says nothing, not one single word, about the intellectual difficulties of prayer. Just as He took the thought of God for granted, so He took the fact of prayer for granted. All the difficulties in prayer of which our Savior spoke are those which are natural to human weakness, and these He amply recognized. He knew how prone men were to give over praying. He knew how ready they were to faint in praying. He knew how hard it was for men and women to pray always. And therefore by parable and precept, and more particularly to His own disciples, our Lord taught that men ought always to pray and not to faint.

Jesus Lived Prayerfully

Not only did He give such encouragement in His teaching. He gave it still more emphatically by His example. Our Lord was a Man of prayer. The picture of our Savior which is enshrined in the tenderest memories of Christendom is that of the Man of Sorrows. But not less true would it be to all we who know of Him, and to the wellsprings of His being, if our most cherished picture of Him were that of the Man of Prayer. Often have men gathered together all the times in the Gospels when we find our Lord at prayer. It is a singularly helpful study and I commend it to you. But even when you have collected all these instances, and learned something of our Savior's habits of prayer, even then you have not gained a just impression of the place in the Savior's life which prayer occupied. His service was the other side of prayer. His sinlessness was the victory of prayer. His life in all its activity and suffering was the reflection of His Father's will. And if He always did what pleased His Father, and moment by moment was reinforced from heaven, it was because He always prayed and never fainted. Great then is the encouragement to prayer which we should draw from our Savior's teaching, but greater still is the encouragement we should draw from His example.

Jesus Lives Yet to Pray for Us!

Nor does that example end with His earthly life. It is carried over into His heavenly life. He ever liveth to make intercession for us. He ever liveth—to pray. Will you think of the wonder of that for a moment? In His earthly life our Lord was limited. He was made of a woman; made under the law. From the very fact that He had become our Brother, He had to limit Himself to certain forms of service. But from the moment of the ascension, glorified, freed from earthly limitations, it was for Him to choose, for the advancement of His kingdom, any of all the ministries of heaven. I shall not speculate on the ministries of heaven. Eye hath not seen and ear hath never heard them. I only want you to note this, that our Lord still chose the ministry of prayer. And nothing is better fitted to awe our hearts with a new sense of the magnificence of prayer, than that choice of the ascended Savior. He ever liveth to make intercession for us. He ever liveth to pray. Out of all the armory of glory He hath chosen the weapon of All-prayer. And so by His teaching, and His life on earth, and His life on the right hand of God, Christ exhorts us powerfully that we ought always to pray and not to faint.

Why, Then, Are We So Prone to Faint?

And yet there is no human activity in which we are so prone to faint. How often our prayers are as the morning cloud and as the early dew. In spite of the spoken encouragement of our Lord—in spite of the example of His life—in spite of the wonderful thought that now and always He is making intercession for us—how easily are we overcome in prayer. In our spiritual literature we have many diaries of men who were pre-eminently men of prayer. We have the diaries of Andrew Bonar and of McCheyne and of Boston and of Wesley. Ah, what a struggle in every one of them to maintain a living fellowship with God and how prone every one of them to faint! True, there come hours when prayer is easy, and often when they come we know not how. The wind bloweth where it listeth, that is all, and lo! The heart is going out to God. But day by day, amid life's duller duties, to maintain the life of prayer in its fervency, who to know that our Savior understands, to know in the midst of all the difficulty, that He encourages us to persevere. And if He, who lived in the sunshine of God's presence, needed the strengthening of prayer continually, who can estimate our need?

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[nChrist]

Fainting in Prayer - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

Prayer Is a Most Demanding Task

From this proneness to faint in prayer there is one thing that we learn, and it is something that is worth the learning. It is that prayer is work, and perhaps the hardest work in which a human being can be engaged. How ready we are to think of prayer as easy or as the occupation of a vacant moment. How seldom we come to it with that determined spirit which we bring to bear upon our daily business! There are fortunes, brother, to be made in prayer, far more lasting than any made in commerce, and yet how few apply themselves to prayer with the zest and keenness that they bring to business. In all work three parts of our being are involved. There is the understanding, by which we work intelligently; there is the heart by which we labor willingly, there is the will by which we labor doggedly. And yet I know not any kind of work that calls for all these three in constant exercise so urgently and so utterly as prayer. A handicraftsman may ply his task and yet his thoughts may go wandering far away. A student may set himself to work through habit, even when his affections are far away else where. But the moment prayer becomes habit it is dead, the moment the thoughts go wandering it is over, and the moment the heart is drawn away to other things, prayer is an idle repetition. All that is needed for our daily labor is needed for the exercise of prayer—our understanding that we may pray intelligently, our affection, and our will. And they are needed, moment by moment, every time we pray, in such activity, and life, and exercise, that prayer, true prayer, so far from being idleness, is one of the sternest labors in the world. That view of prayer is amply corroborated by the terms in which it is described in Scripture. It is a wrestling, a striving, a laboring; at its intensest with our Lord it is an agony. Clearly, then, prayer is no easy thing, no light employment of an idle moment. It is the most difficult, the most blessed, the most victorious labor that can engage the faculties of man.

Indeed, brethren, it's very difficulty is an argument for its efficiency. For nothing that a man can take in hand so rouses the antagonism of the powers of darkness. Let a man busy himself with preaching merely, and the devil will not tempt him above measure. Let him study or let him teach or let him visit, and he is not conscious of unseen antagonism. But the moment anyone begins to pray, to do it deliberately and earnestly, it is as if all the powers of hell had been let loose against him, to baffle him in his endeavor. Distractions and interruptions multiply as by the cunning of some unseen opponent. Thoughts that at other times are light as air acquire a strange and terrible insistency—it may be some name we have forgotten, it may be some rankling word that has been spoken, it may be something we have left undone. With a malevolence that is as real as it is subtle we are assaulted from without and from within. It is as if all the powers of darkness had combined to disgust us with the exercise of prayer. And that tremendous enmity that meets us, and fights against us, and never gives us rest, is but a proof how Satan trembles when he sees the weakest saint upon his knees. If prayer were powerless it would be easy. The prince of the powers of the air would not concern himself. He would let it alone, as he lets so much alone that we dignify with the name of Christian service. And the fact that no man ever yet began to pray but immediately he was tempted of the devil, shows what a mighty instrument true prayer must be for the pulling down of the strongholds of the night. My friend, Christ understood all that. He had proved the virtue of All-prayer. In His eyes it was the one victorious weapon that God loved and the devil hated. And therefore He went about urging men, knowing perfectly their human weakness, that they ought always to pray and not to faint.

How Real Is Prayer?

One of the great causes why we faint so readily is just that prayer seems to be so unreal. We cannot feel; we cannot realize; we seem to be speaking into empty darkness. We speak for instance to a friend, and there is a human face to answer ours. By the expression, by the eyes, by the attention given, we know that we are being listened to. But when we speak to God with open eyes it is only the empty air that is around us, and when the eyes are closed we see not anything. Nor does the unreality cease there. It goes a great deal deeper than such vacancy. For who does not know how it assails the heart again even when the most earnest prayer is over—as if nothing had happened, as if time were wasted, as if the world were just as it had been, and we as ready, at the first temptation, to give ourselves to the old sin again. It is this haunting sense of unreality that has led men and women to pray to the Virgin Mary. It is this which has led to praying to the saints which is so universal in Roman Catholic countries. And anyone who has ever sought to pray can understand that feeling perfectly—and yet
I show you a more excellent way.

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[nChrist]

Fainting in Prayer - Page 3
by George H. Morrison

I was speaking the other day to a Belgian woman, and our talk fell on prayer. And I asked her if she prayed to the saints, and she said, "Oh yes, I pray to the saints." And then she added as a child might have done, and, adding it, was wiser than she knew—"but when I want anything very much, then I pray to the Father." My friend, that is what Christ has done. He has taught us to lift our hearts and say "Our Father." With all the loving reality of Fatherhood He has brought God very near to all of us. And for him who has dwelt in the Fatherhood of God, and learned even a little of its love, prayer can never be unreal again. That thought of Fatherhood dwelling in the mind, makes God as real as any living friend. It clothes the eternal Spirit with such tenderness that we can tell Him everything and know He hears us. We need no Virgin Mary anymore, bending down in womanly compassion, when we can say "Our Father which art in heaven." Oh, how close He is to all of us, that heavenly Father who will never leave us! How He is bending down and brooding over us to catch the faintest whisper of His child! Nothing has ever been taught us in the ages that has helped to make our prayers real like that—"Our Father which art in heaven."

You Are Being Summoned to Pray

I therefore call you, friend, to remember the ministry of prayer. The times are wakening us to the great need of it, and we must not miss the summons of the times. Some of you perhaps have never really prayed, though you have always kept to the daily habit of it. Some of you may have ceased long years ago even to preserve the form of prayer. And all of us, however we have been serving, know that our greatest failure has been here, for none of us have been praying as we should. My brother, God is using these present times to bring thousands back to prayer again. In every country of the world today there are multitudes praying who never prayed before. And if only you, with all your opportunities, will join in that mighty ministry of prayer, we shall yet live to see such blessings given as will make it bliss for us to be alive. It is not easy, but nothing high is easy. There is little time, but you can make time. For anything your heart is really set on, it is wonderful how time can be made always. Blessings are waiting us, and power is waiting us, and I believe that national peace is waiting us, waiting and ready for that hour when God is given His own place again. When our life is drawing to a close and we look back over the years that we have had, there will be a thousand things we shall regret, for they will seem to us then to have been vanity. But there is one thing that we shall not regret even on the margin of the grave, and that is the time we gave to prayer. Then it will be far more real to us than it was in the hour when we were praying. Then it will be far more real to us than things that once were of supreme importance. Then we shall wonder at our inveterate folly in having toiled and served and labored for the Master, and been so forgetful of the amazing promises that He has given to everyone who prays. My brother and sister, anticipate that hour. It is coming swiftly and it is coming surely. Live today as you would like to have lived when you look back from the end upon it all. And remember that whatever Christ hath taught you, by precept, by example, He hath taught you this, that men ought always to pray and not to faint.

____________________

George H. Morrison Devotions

Dist. Worldwide in the Great Freeware Bible Study package called
e-Sword by Rick Meyer: http://www.e-sword.net/downloads.html
Full Featured - Outstanding - Completely FREE - No Strings Attached

(The goal of Rick Meyer is to distribute excellent Bible Study
Software to every country on earth in their own language FREE
of charge, and that goal gets closer by the day.)
____________________

[nChrist]

July 9

The Doctrine of Delays - Page 1
by George H. Morrison

He would not for a while— Luk_18:4

A Freedom Only a Son Would Take

This parable, as the Scripture itself tells us, was meant to teach us importunity in prayer. Christ, who was tempted in all points like as we are, and who had wrestled through many a stern hour of intercession, knew well how the heart is prone to faint when the heavens we pray to are as brass. The judge in this parable is a venal and villainous creature, the kind of man who is still the curse of the East; and anyone but Christ might well have hesitated to compare his actions with those of the Almighty. But a Son can take large liberties sometimes; He will run the risk of being misunderstood. I know no parable that so assures me of the perfect freedom that Christ had with His Father; a servile courtier would not have dared to speak so. Love can be very silent and yet happy, but love has the boldest and the bravest of all tongues. There are hours when only love dares to say nothing. There are hours when only love dares to say everything.

How Long, Lord?

So to our text then, "He would not for a while." That is to say, this judge delayed to act. And that at once suggests to me for our consideration the great problem of divine delay. It meets us everywhere and in every sphere; there is scarce one heart but has been torn and tried by it. The delays of man may be infinitely vexing, but they are nothing to the delays of God. It meets us in nature, when men may be gaunt with famine, yet God will not hurry the harvest by one hour. It meets us in life where all that a man has toiled for often reaches him seemingly just an hour too late. It meets us in judgment when wrongdoers live and flourish till the cry from the altar rings in heaven, "How long?" Above all, it meets us in the sphere of prayer. How many patriots have prayed for their country's weal, yet the years rolled on, and there was no arm to save. How many mothers have prayed for their sons or daughters, and been well-nigh broken-hearted by delay. What a world of experience there is, and how the centuries vanish, when we hear the cry of the psalmist, "O God, make haste to help us!" It is as if his faith were flickering out into its ashes, under the torment of delay.

Divine Delay Is an Age-Old Problem

But the very fact that the psalmist prayed that prayer shows that the problem is a very old one. And we are so knit together in this our strange humanity, so touched into strength and courage by companionship, that often just to know the world-old pressure of a burden, gives a certain ease in our own bearing of it. Half of the bitterness of children's woes lies in the thought that they are all their own. They have no experience of life yet, their eyes are not opened; they have not learned the lesson of comparison. As we grow older, and see a little further, we find strange help in the brotherhood of trial. Now in this matter of delay it seems to me that not a few of God's people are still children. They think that God has some quarrel with them personally. They forget that the problem is as old as time. Noah felt it when he built his ark and the sun still shone in a heaven of unclouded blue. Abraham felt it when the promise of Isaac was given him, yet the summers passed and the hair of Sarah was silvered, and there was no rippling of childish laughter in his tent. David felt it—had he not been anointed to be king; yet here he was hunted as an outlaw on the hills. Paul felt it when he prayed, and prayed again, that the Lord would take away the thorn out of his flesh, yet he woke in the bright morning to his work; and for all his prayer, the thorn was with him still. Do not say, then, "God has forgotten me," because the burden of delay weighs heavy on you. We are brought into the fellowship of all the saints, by what we suffer as well as by what we gain. The problems of yesterday are but as gossamer, and a breath of tomorrow's wind will scatter them. It is the old, old problem, like the old, old joys, that reach the secret places of the heart.

Delay Is the Road to Greater Joy

It is well to remember, too, that the higher we rise, the more intense does the difficulty become. The very measure in which we feel its weight, is a kind of test of the things for which we seek. One summer perfects a flower in the field; but to perfect a child takes twenty or thirty years. And the very fact of the divine delay, in calling into their amplitude these childish faculties, is a proof that there is more of heaven in the child than in the most exquisite flower God ever fashioned. There are myriads of creatures who are born and dance and die in the short span of a bright July day. No one in watching them would ever dream of charging the Creator with delay. But a nation of men which is to serve the high ends of heaven is never fashioned hastily like that. Through pilgrimage and war and struggle and blood and tears, by heroism that oft seems unavailing and sacrifice that is like water spilt, it becomes the polished instrument of God. Delay, then, tends to become more marked, the higher you rise in the Creator's purposes. Great delays in the mystery of providence are the highway for the chariot of great blessing. The joy that cometh in the morning might be far less thrilling, had not the weeping from which it springs endured all night.

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[nChrist]

The Doctrine of Delays - Page 2
by George H. Morrison

Had Jesus Forgotten Mary and Martha?

We see this very clearly in the raising of Lazarus—that tenderest and most touching of all miracles. When Lazarus was ill—when his state had become critical—Martha and Mary, you remember, sent word to Jesus. Now Jesus loved Lazarus and his sisters, and the happiest memories encircled that village home; yet the Gospel tells us that when Jesus heard the news, He abode two days still in the place where He was. There are seasons when two days seems like a moment; there are seasons when two days seems an eternity. When a life is in the balance half-an-hour is endless; twice four-and-twenty hours is unbearable. What did it mean? Had Jesus quite forgotten them? Was He deaf and dead to the prayers of the sisters' love? I think that Martha and Mary, with their eyes on dying Lazarus, knew the burden of divine delay. They knew its burden then; they know its meaning now. They see it irradiated with purpose and with wisdom. A little boon might have been granted instantly, but the great actions of God have tardy wheels. The greater and richer the blessing that we pray for, the more must we reckon on the delays of God.

Nor should we forget—for this is very important—what I might call the moral training of delay. Did we get everything we craved for in the very hour of asking it, I think it would be a long farewell to manhood. The one sure way to ruin a young child is to give it immediately all for which it asks; and to the Ancient of days, whose hairs are white as wool (see Dan_7:9), I fancy the oldest readers are but as little children. Think of Christ's treatment of the Syro-phoenician woman when she came to Him praying for her daughter. All her motherhood was on her lips and in her eyes as she pled and interceded for her child. Do you think it was cruel of Christ to answer her never a word? Do you think it was harsh to speak about the dogs? How much we should have missed, and how much Christ Himself would have missed, had it not been for that practice of delay! It was that which called out in her fine persistence, her faith, her wit, all that was brightest in her. She might have been anybody when she began, but she was a woman among women when she ended. And many a person has begun by being anybody, and ended by being a woman among women, because they were kept praying and pleading long for something that was to be granted by and by. Work reveals character, but so does waiting. Waiting shows the baby or the man. We need to be tested to prove if we be worthy just to receive and use the thing we crave. So it often is that God delays, and will not answer us, and keeps us waiting. It is not in scorn, but in the wisest love, that He will not for a while.

There Is Silent Preparation behind God's Delay

Then it is very helpful to remember that divine delay does not mean inactivity. God is not idle when He does not answer us; He is busier preparing the answer than we think. There have been men of genius who could only work irregularly; for long periods they seemed to do nothing at all. Then suddenly, and as if by inspiration, their powers took fire and they wrought at a white heat. You may be sure of it that the periods in between were not so idle as the world considered them. By thought, by reading, by communion with glad nature, half unconsciously they were preparing for their work. And when the kindling came, and the fire burned within them, when they were divinely swept into utterance or action, they owed far more than we should ever guess to the silent preparation of delay. As it is with men of genius, so with God, only in loftier and nobler ways. His delays are not the delays of inactivity. They are the delays of preparation. In an instant the tropical storm may burst and break, yet for weeks—unseen—the storm has been preparing. The sunshine of May comes, and all the world is green, yet on God's loom of January that robe was being spun. And the morning breaks when at last some prayer is answered, and the desert rejoices and blossoms as the rose, yet the answer was being fashioned in these very years when we said there was no eye to pity and no arm to save. It takes a million years to harden the ruby, says the poet, yet through all the years the hardening goes on. It takes a century for the sea to wear away one cliff, yet every night when we sleep the breakers dash on it. So when we pray and strive and nothing happens, till we are tempted to say "God does not know, God does not care," who can tell but that, behind the veil, infinite love may be toiling like the sea, to give us in the full time our heart's desire? "My Father worketh hitherto and I work." It is a mysterious word of the Lord Jesus Christ. Perhaps God, like some of the busiest men I know, is doing most when He seems to be doing nothing.

There Is Love in Delay

And so in closing I would say to you: do not lose heart at the delays of God. Speed, after all, is but a relative term, and there is more love in God's slow method than you think. I was staying the other week with some friends in Ireland, when word came that our friend's place of business had been broken into. It was a holiday and he was away in Galway, and was not to be home again until that evening. Well, he came home, very tired and famished, and a foolish wife would have rushed out to meet him with the news; but his wife was not foolish, she was Scotch and sensible, and she let him wash and eat and rest himself a little; and then when he was ready to see things rightly she broke the news, and I saw there was wisdom and love in that delay. You who are mothers here, and who look back on those sweet years when your innocent children played about your feet, had you never some great news to tell your children, yet you deliberately withheld it for a time? "If we tell them tonight there will not be one wink of sleep; if we tell them when they waken, there will not be one bite of breakfast"; and so deliberately you held back the blessing, and you did it just because you loved them so. If ye then being evil, act like that, is it incredible that God should do the same? Is it fair to distrust our Father, to say He has no pity, to charge the heavens with being brass above us? I think it is wiser to pray on, strive on, casting all doubts to the devil who inspired them; believing in a love that never mocks us, and that will give us our heart's desire in His own time.

____________________

George H. Morrison Devotions

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[nChrist]

July 10

Zacchaeus

And, behold, there was a man named Zacchaeus, which was the chief among the publicans, and he was rich. And he sought to see Jesus who he was…And he ran before, and climbed up into a sycomore tree to see him— Luk_19:2-4

Jesus and Modern Man

The eighteenth chapter of Luke closed with Jesus giving sight to a blind man; Luk_19:1-48 opens with the priceless story of Zacchaeus. And that swift passage from the blind beggar to this high official well illustrates the rapid changes that meet us in the life of Jesus Christ. We are prone sometimes to think of the lot of Jesus as a very limited and circumscribed one. We think there was little in it of that movement and variety that characterize our life in modern times. And so (almost unconsciously) many have grown to feel that Jesus is standing far away from them. As a matter of fact, I question if there ever was a life so rich in its variety as Christ's. It is amazing how swiftly the scenes change; how constantly the environment is shifting. This rapid transition from the roadside pauper to the home of one of the richest men in Jericho is typical of the experience of Jesus.

There Is an Interest in Christ in Most Unlikely Quarters

If there was one man who might have seemed deadened to religion, it was this receiver-general of Jericho. He had had such treatment from the priests of Jericho (and Jericho was a very priestly city), as might have thoroughly disgusted him with religion. He had grown rich, too, in very questionable ways—and had not this Jesus spoken tremendous words about the perils even of clean riches? And yet Zacchaeus was aflame with eagerness to get into close touch with Jesus Christ. Why he was so, maybe we cannot tell. We do not know what he had heard from his collectors. We cannot tell what his home was in his childhood. We have no hint of the ministries of God in keeping his conscience alive through all the years. Ail we can say is that this was the most unlikely of all quarters, yet here was a hidden interest in Christ. Now I wish all parents and teachers to remember that. It will give them new heart and hope for certain children. Who knows what little boy may not be interested, when we recall the interest of this little man?

Where There's a Will There's a Way

Jesus was at the height of His popularity. Wherever He moved the narrow streets were crowded. It would have taken a Saul to have seen Him well; there seemed no hope for a small man like Zacchaeus; and had Zacchaeus had a small heart in his bosom, he would have gone home and said it was impossible. But Zacchaeus had had a great will to grow rich, and he had found there was a way to that. And now he had a great will to see Jesus, and he was not the sort of person to be stopped. He quite forgot himself, says Matthew Henry. He climbed the sycamore like a schoolboy. Perhaps he had heard that except we become as children we cannot see the kingdom of heaven—or the King. At any rate he was earnestly bent on seeing Jesus, and as a result he saw Him and was seen. All of which has been written down to teach us that the whole-hearted search for God is always crowned. What texts lay stress on that? "Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you." "Those that seek me early shall find me."

It Often Calls for Courage to Be Kind

Did you ever think how brave it was of Jesus to speak in this frank and friendly way to Zacchaeus? Had Jesus been intent on being popular, He would never have cast His eyes upon the sycamore. No class was more hated in Jewry than these tax-gatherers, and the richer they were the more they were detested. Yet Jesus, in the strength of His great purpose, deliberately set that hatred at defiance; He made no effort to conceal from the crowd that the man they loathed was going to be His friend. Immediately they began to murmur at Him (Luk_19:7)—it was the hoarse cry of a deep-seated anger. It was the breaking of the waves upon Him, which were soon, in floods, to go over His head. But calmly and very sweetly Jesus prosecuted the friendship; it called for wonderful courage to be kind. Would you have dared to act so, do you think? Have you ever tried it in your own small way? Zacchaeus forgot himself, says Matthew Henry. But that was nothing to the self-forgetfulness of Jesus.

The Moral Influence of Gospel Joy

We are told that Zacchaeus received Jesus joyfully; you can picture the tides of gladness in his heart. He had only hoped to get a glimpse of Jesus, and now he was going to be His host. And it was just the joy of it ail, I take it, filling his poor soul, and sweeping up into the empty creeks, that inspired him to the noble sacrifices of verse eight. I dare say the priests had often preached at him to go and give half his fortune to the poor. But somehow that had only closed his heart; they had never touched the spring of sacrifice. Now comes Jesus and fills him with great joy, and he cannot do enough for such a Lord—the joy of the Lord had indeed become his strength. Do you see the moral power of Gospel joy? Do you recognize the ethical worth of it? Even Jesus for the joy that was set before Him, endured the cross, despising the shame.

How Various are the Tokens of the New Life

How did it show itself in the Philippian jailer? It showed itself first by his faith. And how in the woman who anointed Christ's feet. First, by her much love. And what were its clearest tokens in Zacchaeus? Repentance and earnest effort to amend. One life, yet showing itself in diverse fruits. One spirit, yet working outward in various ways. In which way is the hidden life of Christ revealing itself in those who read this page?

____________________

George H. Morrison Devotions

Dist. Worldwide in the Great Freeware Bible Study package called
e-Sword by Rick Meyer: http://www.e-sword.net/downloads.html
Full Featured - Outstanding - Completely FREE - No Strings Attached

(The goal of Rick Meyer is to distribute excellent Bible Study
Software to every country on earth in their own language FREE
of charge, and that goal gets closer by the day.)
____________________