the Third Week after Easter
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Daily Devotionals
Bowen's Daily Meditations
"How sweet are thy words unto my taste!" - Psalms 119:103.
Even the words of a fellow-creature of earth, how inexpressibly sweet sometimes, how beyond all calculation precious! All gold and silver would be despised in comparison with them. They come freighted with something as dear as life, with love, and the heart is enriched with them as though the breath of God had come into it. But does not this rainbow of earthly joy die gradually out? Do not the enrapturing words sooner or later become exsiccated in the memory, and may they not meet with contemptuous treatment as remembrancers of a worthless illusion? Indeed they do; indeed they may.
Nevertheless the heart may find its happiness, its true and undying happiness, in words. At this moment there is nothing in the whole world so much to be desired as certain words. Words of love. Words expressive of infinite love. Treasures, pleasures, honors of earth, what are they? My unsatisfied soul cries out. Give me words. Words whereby I may know the love that God has towards me. Words declaring the unchangeable attachment of the Saviour. Words purifying my heart. Emboldening me in prayer. Exhibiting to me the blissful future. Words that shall give life to my dead powers, and change me from glory to glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord.
Nor does my soul cry out in vain. My palate hath a thousand appetites; nay, if they were counted, has far more than a thousand capacities for distinct perceptions of flavor. He who thus wondrously endowed the human palate, has made to grow on ten thousand different trees, fruits with flavors exactly responsive to all these distinctions of taste. He who has so marvelously and lovingly shown his acquaintance with my physical tastes, will he overlook the deeper wants of my soul, and withhold those words of consolation and of blessing, with out which the world, with all its profusion of fruit, were a mere wilderness? He will not. He has given words whose sweetness satisfies the soul.
What is necessary in order that we may find God’s words sweet unto our taste?
A belief that they are in an absolute sense, God’s words. A belief that they are God’s words to us, as individuals, - to you, to me; that we have forfeited all title to his favor, deserve his everlasting wrath; that in his favor is life; and to hunger and thirst after righteousness.
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