the Fourth Week after Easter
Click here to learn more!
Daily Devotionals
Our Daily Homily - Volume 3
Malachi 3:3—He shall purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and silver.
If you are just now in the fire, dear soul, be of good cheer—it shows at least that you are silver, and that you are capable of performing more acceptable service in God’s holy Temple. If it were not so, God would not take so much pains. He chastens those whom He loves, and prunes the branches that are already bearing fruit. What a comfort it is that He surrenders this work to no other hands than his own. He may give his angels charge concerning us when we are in danger; but He keeps our purification beneath his special superintendence.
But notice that He sits. What patience is here! However many years thou mayest have to lie on that couch, He will sit beside thee. The nurses will go off duty, but He never. Love may faint and be weary, and nod into light slumbers; but He never slumbers nor sleeps. Those that were most frequent in attendances may drop off; but He will sit, night and day—when the soul is lonely, and when the room is filled with cheery voices; when the pain is almost unbearable—reach out the hand, you will touch his; breathe the softest sigh, He will answer, "I am here."
And the process will be continued until the scum has passed away, with its rebellion and murmuring, and his dear face shines, sweetly mirrored in its every outline and lineament, Then the fires will die down, and He will bid thee arise to reap the full reward. God is set on reviving the better, holier past, to which some of us revert with tender interest. "It was better with me then than now," we sometimes say. But the tender grace of those days that are dead will come again to the soul, who yields to God’s refining. "The offering of Judah and Jerusalem shall be pleasant unto the Lord, as in the days of old."
