Daily Devotionals

Bowen's Daily Meditations

Devotional: June 10th

" Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you." - John 14:27.

Christ makes his will, the hour of his departure having come. Silver and gold he has none. To the eye of the world it is a pauper going his way; and the wonder is that there should be any to attend him in his last hours. He has lived in the world and amassed nothing; not so much as to pay his funeral expenses. His life is a failure; he has had the usual advantages, yet, leaves the world as he entered it. You will find no parchments in his drawers; no stray pieces of gold in his coffers; it is a dead man dying; for what but a dead man is he that has no worldly property?

This expresses the feeling, if not the reasoning, of many. Yet why do men seek property? Is it not from the want of peace? Why do we behold the world rushing passionately along ten thousand paths? Because they find not peace. They seek peace by appropriation, not by renunciation. Would not even their own wisdom teach them to purchase peace, if an opportunity presented itself, by the surrender of a globe of gold?

The peace that Christ leaves, is his own peace. Consider his life. He endured the constant contradiction of sinners. He was numbered with the transgressors. He was stigmatized as devilish in origin, character, and purpose. Each returning day brought him new trials, new sufferings. So that the peace he leaves is consistent with many trials, many afflictions. These in fact serve for the proof of it.

The legatees of Christ have peace of conscience. Myriads of sins, each of which - in the day of the mind’s awakening - has the tormenting faculty of many devils, are bound as to this power, and that forever. We have peace in the deliverance from inordinate desires: - in the consciousness of God’s favor: - in the assurance that all things concerning us will be ordered for the best: - in freedom from worldly cares: - in the certainty of Christ’s victorious coming and everlasting reign.

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