Daily Devotionals

Bowen's Daily Meditations

Devotional: April 9th

’’Heal me, Lord, and I shall be healed." ― Jeremiah 17:14.

For the devices of man only increase my malady. The utmost they can do is to conceal a plague spot here and a plague spot there; but concealment is not abatement. What is my pride the better for all their prescriptions? What have they done for my self-will? For my unbelief, slothfulness, irritability, prayerlessness, impulsiveness? I come to thee, Lord. He that created me, and whose creation I have spent my days in marring, can alone restore to me his image, and make me to walk in the health of heaven. Heal my heart, my understanding, my memory, my desires, my imagination, my hopes, my fears, my body, my speech, my looks, my acts. I am in a condition that renders me the prey of suffering in every form. All my faculties torment me. My words come back upon me, and pierce me like daggers. My memory is continually fetching some coal of fire to me. My desires carry me into paths where venomous serpents lie in wait. My imagination still beguiles me with the idea that it is my royal friend, and taking me by the hand to lead me to some canopied and luxurious seat, presently lets it go and with derision sees me sink into some black abyss. Hope sits enthroned as it were a delegated angel; but a life-long and frightful experience leaves me unable to doubt the fact that a legion of tormenting spirits are the ministers of this still-smiling enemy. Many endowments of my nature ― which, were I not a moral wreck, a spiritual leper, would have each of them with its own particular key given me the freedom of a heaven all its own ― in this my corrupt condition show themselves each provided with a key to a place of torment all its own. So that the properties which seemed to have most of glory and of paradise still hanging about them, and which therefore inspired me with the most undoubting reliance, are the very properties which have most excoriated my soul and aggravated my malady. But heal thou me and I shall be healed. Release me from my own perverted will, my rash desires, my reckless imagination. If thou wilt thou canst, and there is evidence of thy willingness.

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