the Third Week after Easter
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Daily Devotionals
Bowen's Daily Meditations
"We walk by faith, not by sight." - 2 Corinthians 5:7.
Every man’s world is what his heart makes it to be. When his heart changes, the world changes. When faith has come in and renewed his heart, he thenceforth walks in a new world. A new aspect comes over the face of all things. Faith reveals to him new and most important truths concerning everything, so that he can no longer take a step in just the mood that he formerly did, nor look upon a single individual as he once did.
Imagine a man on a beautiful island where there are a thousand objects to allure the senses and gratify the mind. He walks in groves, or reclines in bowers, or sits upon the grassy bank of a stream, or wanders through the halls of a palace; now with one gay company, now with another. Or if he list he embarks in some serious enterprise, and seeks to give his higher energies play. Until, one day, wandering alone to the extremity of the island, he discovers to his amazement that it is a floating island, and that a mighty current is bearing it on with all its palaces and battlements and hanging gardens and with all its companies of pleasure-loving people, bearing it away, bearing it whither? Ah, this now becomes the most important of all questions! As he returns, everything assumes in his eyes an unwonted look. As he reaches the summit of a hill, or passes along the verge of a precipice, or looks upon a waterfall, or sees a company of men, or hears music, or notices a tradesman counting his gains, one thought possesses his mind; these are all in motion, whither are they going? Music is no longer music, wine no longer wine, health no longer health to him. The discovery he has made puts an extinguisher upon all that he once called light, all that he once called pleasure. At length, after many fruitless inquiries, he meets with one who inhabits another little island connected for the present with the larger one, and who tells him that the island is sweeping on to a gulf of destruction and to an abyss of darkness; and that at the last moment the little isle tenanted by those who have known their danger and taken refuge there, will he detached and anchored forever in a blessed region. He believes. Henceforth how different will be all his perceptions and all his conduct from what they once were.
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