the Third Week after Easter
free while helping to build churches and support pastors in Uganda.
Click here to learn more!
Daily Devotionals
Our Daily Homily - Volume 3
Mark 1:13—He was with the wild beasts; and the angels ministered unto Him.
In what different circumstances is the last Adam to the first! He began in a garden which the Lord God had planted; but his great Antitype in a wilderness, the thorns of which spoke of that primal sin. But whereas the first Adam transformed the garden into a wilderness, the last will convert all desert places into gardens—whether they be in the heart, or the world around—so that they shall blossom as the rose.
To Adam the beasts came, that be might name them; but at the coming of the last Adam they were wild. "He was with the wild beasts." Yet they were tame to his pure manhood. "He had dominion over the works of God’s hands." On his brow the crown of royalty over the inferior races, which man had lost, was already placed. Is it not also true that holy men still have power over the lower creation? Certainly Francis of Assissi had. And in the ages, yet future, the children shall play, unhurt, amid the wild beasts of the forest.
Again it is true of thee, O son of man, that, like thy Lord, thou art between the wild beasts and the angels. On the one side thou teachest the lower, and on the other the higher. At every moment thou art called to choose between these twain. Thy body calls thee this way, and thy spirit that. Be sure to deny the lower appetites; rule them; be king and lord in the realm of thy soul. Make them crouch around thee, as the lions of Daniel’s den. Get thy Lord to master them for thee. Else thou wilt miss the angels of God, who come to encamp around thee, and minister to thee, as one of the heirs of salvation. Was it here that Christ learnt to contrast his homelessness with the lairs of the beasts!
