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Bright Hope in Dark Days
by Charles H. Spurgeon
“Thou art
my hope in the day of evil." Jeremiah 17:17
The path of the
Christian is not always bright with sunshine. He has his seasons
of darkness and of storm. True, it is written in God's Word,
"Her
ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace,"
and it is a great truth, that religion [i.e. Biblical
Christianity] is calculated to give
a man happiness below as well as bliss above.
But experience
tells us that if the course of the just be
"As the shining
light that shineth more and more unto the perfect day,"
sometimes that light is eclipsed. At certain periods, clouds
cover the believer's sun, and he walks in darkness and sees
no light.
There are many who have rejoiced in the presence of God for
a season. They have basked in the sunshine in the earlier stages
of their Christian career. They have walked along the "green
pastures" by the side of the "still waters." But suddenly they
find the glorious sky is clouded.
Instead of the
Land of Goshen they have to tread the sandy desert. In the place
of sweet waters, they find troubled streams, bitter to their
taste. And they say, "Surely, if I were a child of God, this
would not happen."
Oh! say not so, thou who are walking in darkness. The best of
God's saints must drink the wormwood. The dearest of His
children must bear the
cross. No Christian has enjoyed perpetual prosperity.
No believer can always keep his harp from the willows.
Perhaps the Lord allotted you at first a smooth and unclouded
path, because you were weak and timid. He tempered the wind
to the shorn lamb. But now that you are stronger in the spiritual
life, you must enter upon the riper and rougher experience of
God's full-grown children.
We need winds and tempests to exercise our faith, to tear off
the rotten bough of self-dependence, and to root us more firmly
in Christ. The day of evil reveals to us the value of our
glorious hope.
Morning
and Evening by Charles Haddon Spurgeon, April 29
"...let
us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares
us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set
before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher
of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured
the cross..."
Hebrews
12:1-2
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