Daily Devotionals

Music For the Soul

Devotional: September 20th

YOU NEED A REFUGE

Look on my right hand and see; for there is no man that knoweth me: refuge hath failed me; no man careth for my soul, - Psalms 142:4

There is nothing sadder than the strange power which men have of blinking the great facts of their own condition and of human life. I know few things that seem to me more tragic, and certainly none that are more contemptible, than the easy-going, superficial optimism, or the easy-going, superficial negligence, with which hosts of people altogether slur over, even if they do not deny, the plain fact that every man and woman of us stands here in this world, though compassed by many blessings, and in the enjoyment of much good, and having many delights flowing into our lives, and being warranted in laughter and mirth, still stands like an unsheltered fugitive in the open, with a ring of enemies round about that may close in upon him. Self-interest seems often to be blind, and in many, I am sure, it is blind to the plainest and largest truths with reference to themselves, their necessities, and their conditions. Ah, dear friend! after all that we say about the beauty and the brightness and the joyfulness of life and the beneficence of God, we live in a very stern world. There are evils that may come, and there are some that certainly will come. Young people - thank God for it, but do not abuse it - are buoyant in hope, and take short views, and are glad, where older folk, that have learnt what life is generally, have sober estimates of its possibilities, and our radiant visions have toned down into a very subdued grey. Sorrow, disappointments, broken hopes, hopes fulfilled and disappointed - and that is worst of all - losses, inevitable partings when the giant shrouded figure of Death forces its way in at the rose-covered portal in spite of the puny efforts of Love to keep it out, sicknesses, failures in business, griefs of many kinds that I cannot touch - the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, and all the ills that flesh is heir to,- these lie waiting somewhere on the road for every one of us. Are you going to stand in the unsheltered plain, a mark for all these? Do you think you can front them in your own strength? Are you able, calmly and soberly, remembering the possibilities that lie in the black clouds over your head, to say, "Pour on! I will endure? " Nay! verily; you need a refuge.

You carry your own worst danger buttoned up in your own waistcoats and gowns; you bear about with you in your hearts, in your passions, in your desires, a vase of combustibles amidst the sparks of a volcano, so to speak. And any one of these that fill the air may drop into it, and bring about a conflagration. No man that has measured himself, the irritability of his nerves, the excitability of his passions, the weakness of his will, and its ugly trick of going over to the enemy at the very critical moment of the fight, but, if he is a wise man, will say, "I need something stronger than myself to fall back upon, I need some damp cloth or other to be laid over the magazine of combustibles in my heart: I need a refuge from myself."