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Daily Devotionals
Music For the Soul
Devotional: November 22nd

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GOD’S ANSWER TO THE SOUL’S CRY

Who is he that will harm you, if ye be followers of that which is good. - 1 Peter 3:13

Did you ever notice that there are two dwelling-places spoken of in the 91st Psalm? " Thou hast made the Most High thy habitation," " There shall no plague come nigh thy dwelling "; or, literally translated, as in the Revised Version, " a tent " - a particular kind of abode. The same word, "habitation," is employed in the 90th Psalm - "dwelling-place." Beside that venerable and ancient abode that has stood fresh, strong, incorruptible, and unaffected by the lapse of millenniums, there stands the little transitory canvas tent in which our earthly lives are spent. We have two dwelling-places. By the body we are brought into connection with this frail, evanescent, illusory outer world, and we try to make our homes out of shifting cloud-wrack, and dream that we can compel mutability to become immutable, that we may dwell secure. We need a better dwelling-place than earth and that which holds to earth. We have God Himself for our true Home. Never mind what becomes of the tent as long as the mansion stands firm. Do not let us be saddened, though we know that it is canvas, and that the walls will soon rot and must some day be folded up and borne away, if we have the Rock of Ages for our dwelling-place.

But the wide scope and the paradoxical completeness of the promise itself, instead of being a difficulty, point the way to its true interpretation. " There shall no plague come nigh thy dwelling" - and yet we are smitten down by all the woes that afflict humanity. "No evil shall befall thee" - and yet " all the ills that flesh is heir to" are dealt out sometimes with a more liberal hand to them who abide in God than to them who dwell only in the tent upon earth. What then? Is God true, or is He not? Did this Psalmist mean to promise the very questionable blessing of escape from all the good of the discipline of sorrow? Is it true, in the unconditional sense in which it is often asserted, that "prosperity is the blessing of the Old Testament, and adversity of the New "? I think not; and I am sure that this Psalmist, when he said " there shall no evil befall thee, nor any plague come nigh thy dwelling," was thinking exactly the same thing which Paul had in his mind when he said, "All things work together for good to them that love God, to them that are called according to His purpose. " If I make God my Refuge, I shall get something a great deal better than escape from outward sorrow - namely, an amulet which will turn the outward sorrow into joy. The bitter water will still be given me to drink, but it will be filtered water, out of which God will strain all the poison, though He still leaves plenty of the bitterness in it; for bitterness is a tonic. The evil that is in the evil will be taken out of it, in the measure in which we make God our Refuge, and "all will be right that seems most wrong" when we recognise it to be " His sweet will." Nothing can be " evil " which knits me more closely to God; and whatever tempest drives me to His breast, though all the four winds of the heavens strove on the surface of the sea, it will be better for me than calm weather that entices me to stray farther away from Him.

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